Will-Powered
by EXNativo
Summary: Dying isn't all that fun. Coming back to life in a foreign universe to enact a plan for an overworked agent of death is even less so. Follow along as Lucas DeMitri Cask stumbles his way through the adventure of a lifetime, with only a single finger of Armament Haki and a Devil Fruit he refuses to eat for protection. [Self-Insert]
1. Is This A Self-Insert?

**A/N:** Some of you may know me from the SpaceBattle forums. I lean more towards writing omakes for other works when it comes to One Piece, but I decided not too long ago that I would try my hand at an SI.

Yeah, you can probably tell that I've read This Bites!. Because who has started a One Piece SI recently who hasn't, really?

* * *

For as long as I can recall, I've always had the strangest fascination with death.

It was often mentioned as a thoughtless joke that my interests had to do with my name. Perhaps so, but there's something within the concept that calls to me, in a voice that makes my spine crawl. There is the knowledge that it will one day rise and claim me, and I will be left with nothing in that moment but the uncertainty of all that I had ever been told. Who would be correct, and was truth something I would be capable of comprehending once I was gone?

It's usually these thoughts, to be shared with friends once past the point of tipsy and entering the territory of depression, that keep me up at night. It's acknowledging these thoughts that makes me believe I'm smarter than anyone around me, even though I'm well aware that's not true. Seeing through one layer and accepting defeat isn't proof of anything but the conviction I've lacked to think on it any further.

It is my dollar-store philosophy, bolstered and maintained by my own belief that none of it truly does matter. Maybe it's just because I'm still a teenager, or maybe I'm correct, but I like to think of it more as nobody is truly correct, because the questions are so plentiful that there isn't enough time or resources to find them all.

We only live in what we may understand, and death is not something that we understand. It is something that we must learn, as all those who continue to live after they have died apparently have. They exist now beyond our comprehension, but we still know of them. We know of their exploits, of the dreams they inspired and the changes they left behind.

It had been my ambition at one point, to be like them. It was something so irrevocably appealing, to finally find an answer to the questions that I had been asking myself since childhood. I wanted, in my last moments, to know that I had made a change grand enough to be spoken of for millennia after my passing. I wanted to be able to hear about myself, on the other side.

Unfortunately for me, it just wasn't meant to be.

My name is Lucas DeMitri Cask. My friends call me Luke. The precious few who know of my fascination call me Casket when we're alone.

I like pizza with pineapple and anchovies on it. I dislike spiders.

And five minutes ago, I died.

It hadn't even been that grand a death, either. No flames, no fame, hardly any blood until it was all over. No, if anything, it was downright… lame. Eventful for all of five seconds, before the greatest mystery of any lifetime was solved for me.

I slipped in the shower. To be more specific; while I was belting out Weightless by All Time Low at the top of my lungs, I threw my head back a bit too enthusiastically in response to the chorus and sent it right through the glass wall behind me. The pain had been momentary, but after that I was falling to the floor, where I landed on my neck. The last thing I heard was something crunching just below my ear, and then nothing.

No doubt the dumbest fucking thing I'd ever done in my life, not that I would get the chance to top it now. Whoever found the body would be getting an eyeful of me naked, with a stupid grin on my face as a result of the song I'd been in the middle of.

I was too woozy from the impact to really understand what had happened. All I could do was close my eyes as someone… _might have_ shouted my name from behind the closed and locked bathroom door. It was hard to understand through the fog clouding my head.

And that's when things got a little… weird.

 **XxX**

If you asked me to explain what I went through after closing my eyes, I would have thrown up on your shoes and started the cry. If you asked me why I had just had a mental breakdown after ruining your footwear, I would have gone on to tell you the complete truth.

I had absolutely no idea what had happened. I could tell you that when I figured out that I could still think, I was screaming on a beach, and before then was simply pandemonium on my senses.

I _couldn't quite_ recall… clouds. The first image that had crossed my mind was of clouds in all different shades of the colour spectrum and more shapes than I knew could exist. I could remember reaching for one and my hand passing through it. I could remember a tug around my navel with every new colour that entered my vision, conventional to dulled to shades that I never knew existed.

Then there had…or _maybe hadn't_ been hands. Feet. Arms and legs and maybe a torso or two, circling around me as I fell. I remember watching, feeling, as my body was torn apart, my head separated from my shoulders, my mouth still frozen in a stupid grin. I felt as tendrils, visible despite me not being able to _see_ them, engulfed my face and burrowed through my skin. I remember the tears that couldn't even fall from my face as my body was torn apart and then replaced, destroyed and remade, ground into nothingness and built anew from the ashes.

There _could have_ been talking, words that I would never understand being thrown around as shadows argued. I lay before them, not able to move as they went back and forth, up and over, around and around and around until I was finally able to close my eyes and open my mouth. I couldn't comprehend what I knew or how I knew it. All I could understand was the _agony_ of a body that was mine and wasn't, of an existence that should have finished, of a life that I had already seen flash before my eyes.

The images and sequences _may have_ all passed together, some taking minutes while others took months, and all of them contained within the same blurred haze that I couldn't lift from my eyes. All I could get out; as my bones disintegrated anew, my mind faded, my consciousness ebbed, was a single plea for help.

It was at that point that I felt the sand on my back. I cracked an eye open and immediately slammed it shut as the sun burned at my retina. I tried to take a breath, and the air rattling down my throat immediately opened my mind to a new problem.

Everything, my entire being, from the tips of my toenails to the ends of every strand of hair atop my head; all of it burned. It pulsed inside the bones that cracked as I arched my back off the hot sand, a pain more fantastic than anything else I had ever felt. My fingers raked the ground, my howls of pain actually making birds evacuate where they'd been roosting in the trees.

Through the tears in my eyes, I could only just see the faint mist that was rising from my chest. As soon as it left the surface of my body, an unsettling chill set in the skin that had just been vacated, shivers running up and down my spine as I did my best to push myself away from whatever I was looking at.

The last of the blue mist left my skin. As suddenly as it had started, the pain went with it. I was left propped up on my elbows, gasping like a fish out of water, as I watched the mist drift upwards. The higher it reached, the more transparent it became, until I had nothing to stare at but the clouds above my head.

My limbs were shaking, which I pointedly ignored as I clambered to my feet. The back of my head throbbed as I planted both of my hands in the sand and pushed, and my neck clicked painfully as my spine carried me up. My body felt odd, lighter than it should have, and my stomach lurched once I let go of the ground and tried to rely on my own balance to keep me up.

The sound of shattering glass echoed throughout my ears, unbidden and out of place among the crashing waves that I had been listening to up until that point. Bile rose in my throat as my thoughts caught up with me, and before I could even manage two steps in any direction, I had hunched over and thrown up whatever had been in my stomach.

I died I died I died I diedIdiedIdiedIDIED ** _IDIEDBUTIDIDN'T_** -

My heart jumped in my chest. My eyes snapped open at the sensation, a low keening whine rattling up from my burning throat in place of the sob I had been going for. I stared down with bleary eyes, the noise escaping me morphing into a choked squeak as I actually looked at myself.

To start off with, I was naked. That wasn't all that surprising; I'd snapped my neck and stabbed myself in the brain while I was in the shower. I'd have been more concerned if I'd woken up clothed, even if it would have been preferable to the sand that I could now feel in very uncomfortable places.

What was marginally more disturbing was… _it_. Or, that _it_ wasn't _mine_. I knew mine; if there was one thing I knew, it was mine. And this most certainly _was not mine_.

The shock of seeing _that_ connected to me was enough to snap me out of the trance I'd gotten myself into. It was enough to actually make me see that I'd splattered stomach acid all over my own feet, and hear the waves behind me.

Turning around, I shambled like a zombie – hah! – down the beach I'd woken up on, instinctively drawing back once the water proved itself colder than I had been anticipating. I stood there for a moment, just staring at the waves that almost touched the tips of my toes, before the smell of vomit eventually overrode the error messages my brain had been throwing out. The freezing cold water was soon enough reaching up to my waist, where I just… stopped, heedless of all the sharp shit that was poking into the bottom of my foot.

Where the fuck was I? I mean, granted, wherever I'd ended up was probably objectively better than suburbia, Australia, but I wouldn't have minded having some coordinates.

The island I'd woken up on didn't offer up any clues. I turned around, accidentally putting too much effort into the action and almost losing my footing with how quickly my body moved. There were enough trees for it to be considered a jungle, and there was enough sand for it to be classified a beach, and I could see one or two pretty big rocks as well. From where I was standing, there was nothing to suggest how I managed to get here and why I could function properly. As far as I could tell, that wasn't supposed to happen after a surprise lobotomy.

So… was I dead? Was this what came after, an island paradise?

No, seriously, I didn't get it. Where was the fire and brimstone? This hadn't been what I lived my life for.

Letting out a tired sigh, I moved to scratch the back of my head, though that itch died pretty quickly when I got a good look at my hand. Or, more specifically, my index finger. The entire thing was pitch black, with ripples going along the skin that made me worry that it was about to crumble into dust. Experimentally, I flicked at it with my left middle finger – I'd already died once today, and if I did spontaneously combust then I was already standing where I wanted my ashes anyway – and came away from that experience with a throbbing fingernail.

So, here I was, standing in the shallows of an island that _may_ have been deserted, with a single finger the colour and apparent density of obsidian. I was also completely naked, with severe modifications to the most important aspect of my body, had already thrown up all over myself, and… was that a change of clothes hanging from a tree branch all the way back on shore?

I held a hand above my eyes to block out the sun and squinted. A pair of boxers, a pair of briefs (ooh, variety!), a pair of socks, a black t-shirt with a purple skull printed on the front (my favourite), a dark grey pair of jeans (also my favourite), a flamboyant neon orange belt (don't judge me, I'm dead), and a clunky looking jacket with more pockets than what was strictly necessary. Yes, that was a change of clothes hanging from a tree branch all the way back on shore.

Hmm. My eyesight had really improved during all that time I was a corpse. Come to think of it, where were my glasses, and why didn't I need them anymore?

 ** _Your other body didn't survive the journey, so I put this one together for you._**

Oh. Cool. Thanks, strange writing that had just appeared in the ocean beside me.

 ** _No problem._**

Well, now that I had an answer to that question- wait a minute.

My head shot down fast enough for the phantom pains in my neck to become real. I paid that morbid reality no mind, far too busy with the fact that my newly painted finger was scrawling a message in the water in front of me, and that I had absolutely no control over it or the arm it was connected to.

 ** _Sorry for grabbing a stomach that was already full, that couldn't have been pleasant. Still, it was the best fit, and at least you made it. First one I managed to get past those Life assholes, haha! High five!_**

Numbly, I raised the hand I still had control over, blinking so quickly that I may as well have just closed my eyes for all the good it was doing me. My out of control hand collided with the one I had offered, and the limb immediately collapsed backwards.

"…Is this normal?" I didn't even register the pain as my voice, usually a bass tone that I was so proud of, came out will all the dignity of a dying squeaky toy. My hand lashed out, carving a single word into the ocean before returning to my side.

 ** _Nope._**

...Great. _Now_ I was talking to myself. _And_ I was responding. Absently, I pinched my cheek, and almost celebrated when I didn't actually feel it at all. The only things that kept me from concluding that this was a dream was the pain I had already gone through, and the freezing cold water that I'd been standing in long enough to lose sensation in my body. Also, it occurred to me that I should have made arrangements to leave the water over a minute ago, because I losing strength in my legs.

I set a stumbling pace back to the sandy beach, the water lashing against my lower half and almost making me trip too many times to count. It didn't help that one of my arms was flailing out of control, writing out sentence after sentence as I fought the tide, the words following after me and irritatingly easy to see among the waves.

 ** _Alright, you're confused, easy enough to see. Lemme just get this outta the way quick. You died, kid._**

I finally managed to stumble out of the water, even after going way further out than I had originally thought. The words weren't deterred in the least; they made the transition from water to sand so easily that there may as well not have been a transition in the first place.

I made it two steps, doing my best to ignore the words and the hollow feeling in my chest that they caused, when my arm began to spasm anew and I was forced to the sand so it could continue writing.

 ** _Oi, quit ignoring me. Your family has already gone through the funeral, and you're decomposing in your coffin right now._**

"Yes, alright, I kind of figured." The wonder of this new development had faded, leaving me with nothing but the conclusion that I wasn't going to _crawl_ across a beach just to reach my clothes, magical arm and finger be damned.

Don't get me wrong, I was confused, and maybe a little bit scared. But I was also wet, and I now had sand all over my legs. It felt horrible; _I_ felt horrible, which my arm must have picked up on, because control over it returned to me and I was able to climb to my feet.

I managed to make my way over to the tree without incident. My legs were reawakening, and I was in the middle of thanking my six-and-a-bit feet of height for actually allowing me to reach the branch my clothes were strewn about on when whoever had possessed my limb decided to start writing once more.

At least this time they chose the tree, instead of the ground. Manoeuvring my body so I could actually get into the boxers was a chore and a half, which I tackled with all the enthusiasm of someone who didn't want to die of infection in the jungle. The extremely laboured breathing would have to remain as the only evidence that I was still panicking quite a bit, even as I read what it was my hand had to say.

Yes. I know. It had been a long day, and I didn't have a towel.

 ** _That life is over for you, but through a series of shenanigans and unbelievable coincidences, a new project opened up in my department and you happened to be the soul chosen for it. So congrats on your second lease on life, BUT, that's all it is. Sorry to say kid, but you ARE still dead. And that's where things get a little complex._**

"Oh, _that's_ where things get a little complex?" Something deep in the trees in front of me let off a guttural growl, the noise easily echoing down the entirety of the beach. My head snapped up at the noise, which lead to me hastily pulling my boxers up the rest of the way and desperately patting down the jacket's many pockets for… a weapon? A phone? A flare, I don't know, something to defend myself with.

Not that I made it a habit of carrying weapons with me, but they always had their uses. Either way, the pockets were empty, except for a strange lump that I could feel in the far breast pocket. I couldn't quite reach the zipper to that one, and wouldn't be able to until I pulled the jacket down, so for now I would just have to focus on dislodging my pants without ripping them. Even if I hated going outside more than necessary, I at least knew that exposed skin in a damn jungle could and often would end up being a bad idea.

It was at that point that my hand ran out of room on the patch of trunk it had been using. Which led to me almost falling and twisting my shoulder as I was forced onto the tips of my toes so it could reach higher, while I was in the middle of putting my pants on.

 ** _See, I don't have a name. Don't need one. One of the titles I have is death, but that's shared between every infinite possibility and reality, so don't get too excited. I'm far from the top._** My arm jerked upwards once more, further than I could compensate for, which left me dangling in the air as it continued to thrash about. I could feel all the progress I'd made in getting my jeans on literally slipping away, which was why when I saw the thin branch right in front of my face, I sunk my teeth into it and managed to grant myself some stability. Honestly, it felt like a smart idea at the time.

My hand was finally slowing down, which I only acknowledged from the corner of my eye as it stabbed a full stop into the bark. ** _Come to think of it, I'm barely above an intern, but that's where you come in. I've got a promotion riding on you, alright? All you have to do is perform._**

I grunted around the branch, not too thrilled with the idea of trying to form words with a full mouth. These teeth were pretty damn sturdy; I could actually feel the tree branch buckling underneath them as I pulled my pants up around my waist. Once they were secured and I'd managed to swipe the, admittedly garish, belt from the tree, I relinquished my grip on the branch, falling at least half a meter before I hit the sand and stumbled back onto my ass.

My arm was moving before I could. At this point I was just somewhat annoyed as I looped the belt through my jeans' waistband.

 ** _See, there's all this corporate nonsense and hoops that we have to jump through to do our jobs. We exist in perfect harmony with Life, but let's be real, they're a bunch of hoity toity pricks. Long story short, we've found a way to cut some corners and recycle some souls, because we're getting an influx._**

"Influx of souls?" I repeated, one eyebrow notched upwards. If I was talking to some authority on life, I would have giggled like a high-schooler at the implications.

Nope, instead I was talking to some sort of avatar of the afterlife. And wasn't that a sentence I never thought I would say?

 ** _There's something happening in some alternate reality that connects to our office, and people are dropping like damn flies. We have to sign off on_** **every** ** _death. We've got a couple of your years' work ahead of us, and even if we're eternal and forever, that's still a pain in the ass. So we made a deal. Put new production on hold for a little while whilst we funnel those souls back into the system. Now, here's where you come in._**

My possessed hand whipped to the side, the fingers stretching out as it dipped towards the sand. I had one single moment to realise what was about to happen, for all the good it did me. I only got far enough to slam my eyes and mouth closed as my hand swiped through the sand, destroying the words that had been etched there and spraying sand _everywhere_.

Only a patch of my chest, which was where I'd managed to get my other hand up to, remained untouched. Using the back of that hand, I wiped as much sand as I could away from my face, snorting and then hacking up hopefully at least a large amount of what had gotten up my nose. I spat it to the side, shook my head a few times to dislodge anything that may have ended up in my hair, and then finally glanced down as my arm stopped thrashing uncontrollably.

 ** _The Life higher-ups don't like the plan, but they've been around long enough to know the pains of paperwork. So, we got to choose one soul in our possession who had yet to pass on, and resurrect them in another universe. After a period of exactly three years, a vanguard of Life would appear before you in the form of the greatest warrior to ever exist in that reality, and the success or failure of the operation and project in general is decided in a duel to the death. You put on a good showing, we actually get to go home on time for the foreseeable future. You do poorly, and we throw you in the deepest pit in the underworld until you've learned your lesson. You die, and that's it. Game over, soul gone forever, enjoy never having existed and existing forever in the infinite expanse of possibilities._**

I blinked.

Then I wiped my hands on my jeans.

Then I rubbed my eyes.

And then I blinked again, and the writing still, in all that time, hadn't changed into something that made sense.

Which was somewhat hypocritical of me, considering that I wasn't a crying puddle on the beach by now, but until now whatever was talking to me hadn't wanted me to actually _do_ anything. I was _dead_ , why couldn't I enjoy being _dead_?

"…Excuse me?"

 ** _The catch is, you're not supposed to know any of this. I'm breaking the rules by telling you, but what are they gonna do, fire me?_**

I was supposed to go into a fight to the death with the 'greatest warrior to ever exist' BLIND?

"EXCUSE ME?"

 ** _So, I'm the one overseeing you for the most part, and I was allowed to give you three things to get you started. One of them was that nifty new body, and another is that Haki you have there on your finger. The third is the one I'm most proud of, though-_**

"Whoa, whoa, back up!" I waved my hands, both of them, through the air. I got more sand in my hair, gesturing this way and that at nothing in particular, but I'd wanted attention and now I apparently had it. "Souls are real? A battle to the death? HAKI!? Are you telling me this is-"

My hand abruptly returned to the ground. It almost took my head with it; it probably would have if I hadn't moved it out from behind me a second before it was repossessed.

 ** _Well, yeah, I went through your watch history on YouTube. I saw all those theory videos. Keep up, chuckles. Anyway, the final little piece that I'm giving you is what's in your pocket over there._**

My finger ripped itself out of the beach, swerving around and taking my upper body with it so it could point towards my jacket. It took me a moment, a second of staring at the dark colouration of the digit and repeating that one word in my head, to understand exactly what was being asked of me.

My stomach felt emptier than before as I pushed myself to my feet, the sand harder to traverse than ever. It was only a few steps to the base of the tree, but I still reached it far too quickly, unheeding of the cost of my jacket or its status as a gift as I pulled it out of the tree and went for the only pocket that I knew had something in it.

My fingers trembled slightly on the zip. I'm not kidding when I say that I seriously did not want to open it.

In the end, it took a force that was not my own to pull the zipper down. Taking the hint, I swallowed the trepidation and reached into the pocket, my fingers closing gently around the soft object that had been placed inside. There was not a force on the planet that could have forced me to hammer that final nail into the coffin of my reality, so it really sucked for me that I had something to fit that criteria – quite literally – on hand.

My hand withdrew. Within it was what could only be a Devil Fruit.

It was a tomato, or at least the same shape and colour as a tomato. Its skin was swirled and flecked with tiny black specks, an image that left my stomach twisting in on itself at the prospect of actually eating the thing. It wasn't larger than any other tomato I'd ever seen, nor was it heavier than any other tomato I'd ever held. It didn't even have an obnoxious smell.

Despite that, I felt ready to hurl all over again.

My hand struck out, an unwelcome feeling at this point. I focused on how glad I was that I'd dropped my jacket before it could be dashed against the tree once again, the previous writing being maliciously scribbled over as I was forced to orbit the tree's trunk.

The words were bigger this time, more obvious, _blaring_ at anybody who was looking. It was intimidating, frightening, _maddening_ to see unravel; the Devil Fruit's soft skin began to compress in my grip before I forced myself to relax it.

The words circled the tree, which meant that I would have to as well in order to grasp their full meaning.

 ** _The thing about the label 'Devil'? It's mostly a technicality. So what do you say, kid, do you accept the contract?_**

My breath hissed out between my teeth as I brought my hand up to stare at the Fruit. The unassuming, seemingly innocent little Fruit that would give me superpowers and likely kill me before anything else in this reality had the chance.

I took a deep breath through my nose and turned towards the ocean. With the tomato in my grasp, I reeled my arm back.

"You want me to eat something that will make it so I can never swim, in a world that's mostly water?" I muttered under my breath, the slight breeze in the air stinging my still sand-covered face. "…Fuck off."

My arm started to move forward.

The shift was instantaneous.

Before I could get more than a few centimetres, my arm froze. I thought for a moment that it was more divine – or perhaps unholy – intervention that was preventing me from playing their little game, but then I became aware of the flames that were racing across my body.

I wasn't talking fancy about the amount of pain I was in. I was, quite literally, **_on fire_**.

Oh, and speaking of the pain… it was _immense_.

I fell backwards, the Devil Fruit rolling out of my hands as I slammed into the ground. My arm was moving again, but I could barely see it through the tears gathering in my eyes and streaming down my cheeks. My muscles, instead of feeling absent as they had before, protested every movement with absolute certainty, the clicking of my bones as they were caught in the cross-fire loud enough to be heard down the entire beach.

I could feel myself _slowly burn_. To say nothing of the volume I had reached, because I don't know if I could ever describe it with words alone.

The words that were being written in the air in front of me shone through the flickering lights of the fire. Even with my eyes squeezed shut, I could make then out clearly, though actually reading them was another task altogether. Something popped before I could even get halfway through, and I suppose that's when the adrenaline decided it wanted to kick in, because everything got a little bit sharper after that.

 ** _Kid, I can see now that I should have been more thorough. You were sent here with a soul, but I took that away from you as soon as you arrived as per the stipulations in my agreement with Life. Remember the blue mist? With that gone, the only thing holding you together is me, but I can't force you to accept my presence, and it's all or nothing. I can only use your hand right now because on some level, you want answers, and I can give them to you. When I said your soul would be gone forever, I meant it. If you die without a soul, you're done. Finished. Gone forever. And if you don't accept this bargain, then I have to leave. You. Will. Die. And don't misunderstand, kid, there's plenty more corpses where you came from._**

For a brief second, I entertained the idea of ignoring the words.

To be forever gone, would that erase the pain? If I were to never exist, would my family still have to grieve my death? If I were to accept now that I was going to die and crumble away, would it save me worrying and wasting three years of a new life on a goal that wasn't possible?

And would you believe that it was a hallucination that saved me from that decision? Because it couldn't have possibly been anything else.

I could _hear_ it, a faint whisper from over the waves. I could _feel_ it, the slightest displacement of air amongst the crackling flames that were consuming me whole. I could _see_ it, sitting atop a throne and freer than the birds in the sky.

 _"_ _I'm going to be King of the Pirates!"_

And in that moment, I was reminded of a dream that shouldn't have felt as old as it was. A promise I had made to myself when I was too young, and a promise that I had broken through my own carelessness.

No. I wasn't going to die again.

 _Not before I changed the world._

"I…accept…"

The words hurt. Fuck, _everything_ hurt. But they were enough, because as soon as I'd finished speaking, the fire was gone. I lay there for a moment, before pushing myself up onto my arms, marvelling at the lack of pain I felt, the lack of damage to my body and my clothing.

Something tapped against my leg. I didn't even have to bother looking at the Devil Fruit, merely picking it up and holding it up to my face as I spoke to the air where the words had been.

"I will eat this Devil Fruit…" I then turned and placed it firmly in the sand, pointedly pushing it away with the back of my hand and raising my eyebrows, "later."

I didn't burst into flames at once this time, which filled me with enough confidence to fold my arms and rock slightly to the side so I could match the slope of the beach. I'd only just managed to get comfortable when a sudden gust of wind - which sounded suspiciously like laughter, for whatever reason - slammed into my back and sent me face first into the sand in front of me.

Just to add insult to injury, something that I could only assume was the Devil Fruit then started jabbing me in the side of the head. Grimacing against the grains that now pervaded every open orifice on my face, I shifted my hips to the side so that I wasn't crushing my new… addition, cursing every which way available in my language when it proved useless and I had to instead shift so I was lying on my side.

Stupid anime worlds and their unrealistically proportioned body parts. And it couldn't have even been a world that I knew inside and out, oh no.

It just had to be One Piece, an anime world that I'd never actually spared the time to properly watch or read.

Great.


	2. The Obligatory Training Montage

**A/N:** I forgot to mention him last chapter, but my thanks to TheRealEvanSG for being my beta on this project. If you've got the time after reading this chapter, may I suggest his One Piece SI, Ripples in the Pond?

Also, whoop whoop, last update of 2016~!

* * *

The first six hours I spent as a denizen of the One Piece world also happened to coincide with the longest amount of time I'd ever sat in one place, with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company.

I sat in the sand, my hands splayed out either side of me, for so long that the sun had sunk below the horizon and the waves were lapping around my feet by the time I'd blinked myself away from my own mind. The sound of the tide had been impossibly loud in my ears after spending such a long time tuning it out, and for a moment longer I had simply sat there and watched the foam as it reached my toes and curled around them.

Everything I had was exhausted. My eyes from their unnatural stillness over such a lengthy period of time, my limbs for much the same reason, and my mind because of the number of hoops I'd made it jump through as I ran it around the same track over and over, trying to make any sense of what I was supposed to do now.

I'd always operated my life under the assumption that it would be the one chance I would get. Then I'd squandered that chance, only to immediately get given… _this_. Whatever _this_ was, a second chance in an alien world, or just a form of sick entertainment for some bored being outside my comprehension, I had no idea. I probably never would.

So, I'd sat there on that beach, a Devil Fruit lying beside my leg and one finger shifting the sand a lot easier than all the others. More than once, my mind had wandered to those little novelties, and I would be lying if I said that my curiosity alone wasn't nearly enough to make me want to take a bite of that sickly looking tomato. After all, there was an actual super power inside that thing.

I wouldn't cave, though. Not without a damn good reason, and having an _intern_ for death waving it in front of my face just couldn't compete. If it wanted me to dance to its tune, it would have to bring someone with actual authority along next time. And that was if I wasn't feeling spiteful; those odds weren't big enough to be worth the time wasted calculating them.

So I'd sat there. I'd thought, running myself around in circles in my own head, thinking about my own inevitability and wondering if it was worth mourning the doomed afterlife I had only found out I couldn't enjoy after discovering I had a chance to enjoy it. I'd orbited those emotions until the shivers running down my spine had nothing to do with the temperature of the air and water.

And once it was all over, once I'd twisted my brain like a wet towel and drained myself of all the mental strength I had on offer, I pushed myself to my feet and made my way towards the rest of my clothing. I'd thrown it all on and packed up my shit (or; I'd thrown the Devil Fruit back into my jacket pocket and then tied the bulky piece of clothing around my waist because I didn't feel like putting it on), charged with nervous energy that felt infinitely better in my veins than the lumps of ice that had occupied them before, and set off into the jungle at a brisk pace.

I then spent a moment putting on the pair of boots I'd somehow not seen and almost tripped over, taking a second to clarify that yes, these were mine, before resuming my unplanned hike at the maximum speed my body would allow.

And that turned out to be a lot faster than I was expecting.

My older sister had always liked to mock my running whenever I did so in front of her. According to her, I was all momentum and zero control, and the only way I would be able to turn corners when I was going all out would be to bounce off the walls. For that and many other reasons, I'd earned the nickname of 'Freight Train' from her when we were younger.

It was when I was smashing into and subsequently _through_ the third tree in my path that I decided to finally give her the acknowledgement she deserved. I slammed on the brakes, which only meant that I went through the next two trees diagonally after spiralling out of control, and finally came to a stop against a boulder that hadn't hosted a spider's web of cracks before I came into contact with it.

(I still used that boulder as a land mark a month on. In fact, I'd passed it not too long ago.)

As I lay on the ground for the umpteenth time in however long I'd been dead, I brought a hand to my face and narrowed my eyes at it. It was a strange segue to have occur, but I was used to the leaps in logic that always happened whenever I was deprived of my medication, and something about the appendage was bothering me more and more every single time I looked at it.

It took a little while of just lying in the dirt and using a fracturing rock as a pillow, but eventually I managed to pick out just what had been irritating me; my fingernails were the wrong colour. The change was negligible, but the lightening of a few shades at more wasn't my issue.

It was the fact that this wasn't my body. Whatever had brought me here had commented about the state of _my_ body, had said that it had been decomposing. That it had given me a stomach that was already full, which was why I had needed to empty it. Hell, the damn thing had spoken like it was doing me a great courtesy when it had mentioned the stomach on its lonesome, and what usually happened to a body when it didn't have a soul? Fucked if I know, but life probably wasn't the answer.

I tried to sigh, but nothing came out except a short gasp. Alarmed, I had taken a breath, absently attempting to figure out why I would have been short on breath when I probably shouldn't have been. My flight had been too fleeting to exhaust me, so maybe it had been the multiple impacts?

Whatever it was, it didn't quite manage the job of distracting me from the grim reality of me being the puppeteer of my own meaty, marionette body. So, what, was I some sort of spirit-lacking spiritual entity who had been given command of some amalgamate in my own image, made from multiple part of people whom I could only assume had died somewhat recently, seeing as I at least wasn't rotten anywhere that I could see or feel?

Draping a hand over my chest, I'd let out that sigh that I had been aiming for in the first place, staring at the canopy of leaves above me for however long it took me to realise that something which should have been present and accounted for was conspicuously absent.

I probably would have started having palpitations in that moment, had my heart been beating out a rhythm to interrupt in the first place.

 **XxX**

After that had come the experimentation.

Not immediately afterwards, though. I made sure to dedicate a healthy amount of time to freaking the fuck out and maybe crying a little bit, but after _that_ , the experimentation began.

It wasn't anything major. I didn't have the knowledge or the equipment out in the middle of nowhere for something as advanced as…I dunno, cellular examination, but I made do. I sat on the ground for a few minutes, holding an index and middle finger against my wrist, making _sure_ I was breathing as I kept my eyes scrunched closed and felt for even the slightest shift.

There was nothing, except for the confirmation that my skin was naturally icy cold now, and that hadn't just been due to the water I'd been moving through beforehand.

After that, I'd climbed out of the dirt, slung my jacket over my shoulders, and had taken off running as fast as I could. Weaving around the trees was easier than I had assumed it would be, which only lead to me over-correcting and crashing through vegetation that I would have otherwise had no problem avoiding. That continued for a couple of minutes, me not taking any breaths - even on instinct - and suffering no ill effects because of it, until my foot hit a patch of mud and I stumbled.

That stumble evolved into me tripping over, which sent me on a merry, hundred metre jaunt through the jungle on everything _but_ my feet, which only came to an end when my arm got wedged between a couple of rocks (somehow) and something… ripped? Squelched? The noise wasn't something I think I'm capable of explaining.

All I could tell you was that only two places on my body hurt afterwards. My neck, and the back of my head. And when I spat the dirt that I couldn't even taste out of my mouth and went to wipe my eyes, I only managed to accomplish the former. My arm wasn't responding, and for a moment, I really was concerned that I'd hurt myself.

Imagine my surprise when I glanced down to figure out why my own limb had gone on strike, and found that not only was it no longer connected to my shoulder, but that my severed arm was still squirming from in between a boulder and a slightly bigger and meaner looking boulder.

Feeling somewhat faint, I'd reached out and nudged the rock closest to me, trying not to think about how easy it was to shift the massive object as my arm flopped out from beneath it. My severed appendage had rolled a few times, come to a stop by my side (where it would have immediately begun to drown in a puddle of blood, _if there had been one_ ), and then pinched its thumb and forefinger together.

The two digits began to flap, much like a child mocking someone who had just said something they didn't like, and I could feel the words all around me, despite the fact that I _knew_ they weren't real.

 ** _Life develops, kid._** Too hypnotised to react, my arm shuffled about until it was underneath my shoulder, angling itself upwards and doing a tiny hop. Skin hit skin, and suddenly the only difference between then and five minutes prior was the missing sleeve on one side of my body. **_Death? Well, Death amasses._**

"What the Hell!?"

The sudden words, definitely spoken out loud this time, came a split second before the gunshot. I'd tried to throw myself backwards, but even with my new-found speed, the bullet found my shoulder. The impact spun me around on the spot, my leg slamming against the rock during my unbidden movement and shattering it completely.

I must have managed a full three-sixty rotation, because once I came to a stop, the surrounding foliage had been remarkably familiar.

With my head still spinning, I'd groped blindly with my now-reattached arm at where I'd felt the bullet hit me, wondering why the fuck my shoulder wasn't stinging something fierce. Then my hand closed around something warm and jagged that had stuck to my skin. I pulled it off- no, _out_ without much trouble, my slightly crossed eyes managing to take in the deformed bullet I was holding and the child's toy that was responsible for plugging it into me in the first place.

That was how I met Gaimon.

 **XxX**

Gaimon was pretty alright.

You know, when he wasn't shooting me in the face over and over with a flintlock pistol that shouldn't have been able to hold that much ammunition. Or hunting me through the woods. But any other time? Total bro, hands down.

I recognised the guy straight away; who else during the entirety of One Piece walked around while crammed into a treasure chest? Possibly more than one guy, I wouldn't know for sure, but the army of _Spliced_ rejects flanking him on either side did the job as well as any passport or driver's licence would.

Unfortunately, that was as far as I got before another bullet hit me right between the eyes. I say hit because this one didn't manage to break the skin; it just ricocheted off my skull and blew through the trunk of the tree beside me, sending me back to the ground so hard that my head _bounced_ and I ended up back in a sitting position. I could feel a headache coming on, though it was localised on the _back_ of my head and nowhere else. I would have spent some time thinking about why the impact zone of a fucking bullet apparently didn't mean shit, but that was when the _third_ shot rang out.

What followed reminded me an uncomfortable amount of having to deal with the fallout of punching a wasp's nest on a dare when I was twelve. Angry little things flying through the air and bouncing off every inch of my body as I scrambled to my feet and ran with my metaphorical tail between my legs. There was no damn way that gun was a factory model, not after five slugs dinged off the back of my head in less than a second.

The crescendo of noise made everything a bit difficult to discern. Gaimon was screaming something about zombies and being prepared for the end, I was screaming mainly out of fear and partly to inform him that my revenge would be swift like a wasp, and the collection of hybrid animals had just been watching everything go down with not an ounce of concern for the guy that was being shot over and over.

I stumbled around a tree, crashed through another, caught the ring finger that had just been _shot off my fucking hand_ , and then I was in the jungle and running. Something thumped behind me, and with a glance over my shoulder, I could see Gaimon sitting atop some sort of horse thing that had a snake's head, his flintlock out and pointed right at my eyes.

I slammed my finger back down onto my hand, gave it a split second before twitching it to ensure it was reattached, and then I was _off_.

Our chase lasted two days. Over those two days, I managed to parse a little bit more of my situation. To start off with, not only were my legs faster, but my reflexes were too, once my brain managed to calm down and figure out how to use them. More than one ambush over the course of those days was thwarted once I heard the faintest displacement of air, and was up in the high branches of a tree a second later.

This body, in comparison to the one I left behind, was _agile_. I don't know where the parts had come from the make it, but with how easy it was to flip about the trees and swing around every assault on my person, I was thinking perhaps a circus.

I hadn't been able to eat or sleep, either.

At first, I'd blamed the adrenaline, and then spent a few minutes of silence thinking about how I could possibly be benefitting from adrenaline when my blood wasn't flowing through my veins. Then, I'd eaten an apple that I'd managed to pull from one of the trees I'd run past (after making sure it didn't have any spirals on the surface), and the pieces had come up 26 hours later after I missed a jump and slammed stomach first into an inconvenient branch.

No stomach acid had accompanied it, just mush and only vaguely chewed pieces of fruit. Maybe whatever black magic that was holding me together counted as some sort of stasis that affected every aspect of me on a cellular level, but all I knew for certain was that I hadn't eaten anything, yet I wasn't hungry; and I hadn't slept a wink, yet I wasn't tired. In fact, I felt more alert and on top of my game than I could ever remember feeling.

Figures the only way I'd ever be free from Chronic Fatigue would be fucking _dying_.

Still, that gave me a solid amount of hours over what Gaimon could pull, which in turn gave me plenty of time to trial and error my way towards my first, and only, real goal I had.

Now, I knew the _basics_ of how to put a bow and some arrows together. It had been a class I could only vaguely remember accompanying my sister to, partly to humour her and mainly because she wouldn't have let me hear the end of it after I'd absentmindedly promised her I would go. The class itself had been educational, but the real meat of it had been the free month of archery lessons tacked on that my sister decided at the last second she didn't want. Back then, I'd been young and wider than I was tall and too weak to even pull the string back. Now, I was hoping this would make some sort of difference.

It would be useful to develop a skill [read: asset] now so that I could have something to offer down the line. Besides that, maybe an arrow aimed at his face would calm Gaimon's trigger-happy ass enough to make him at least leave me alone. At the start, it had been kind of startling, but I was getting tired of not being able to even stop and bathe without having to make my way out of another attempt on my life.

Don't get me wrong; I didn't actually want to shoot the guy or his collection of admittedly-cute critters, but I also refused to suffer the end of my rebirth at the hands of someone who could have starred in some low-budget _Toy Story_ knockoff. I had some pride, damn it.

Making the arrows was a pain in the ass. Fletching the arrows was an even bigger pain in the ass. I'd hesitate to call them arrows at all; most of them being lumpy or outright bent because they were the best branches I could find. On one end had been attached the sharpest stones I could find whenever I stopped, on the other a few leaves spread out in a pattern that looked like they would do approximately jack and shit when it came to balancing the thing.

The bow was simultaneously a more frustrating story while being the far simpler process. I quite literally tripped over the perfect components after turning a corner, which was about as blatant as my invisible peanut gallery could get.

I wasn't about to complain, though, so after half an hour of trying to not shatter the perfectly shaped stick or tear the strangely elastic vines to pieces, I was looking at what could maybe pass for a bow. Y'know, if you broke it into pieces, sold those pieces off as firewood, and used the money you got from selling it to buy yourself a real bow.

Even so, it was the best I was going to get out here, which filled me with some twisted sort of pride. That pride was then immediately beaten down once I realised how bad of a shot I was.

I couldn't hit the water if I went down to the beach and faced outwards. The first time I tried shooting at a tree, I managed to hit the tree _behind_ it, have the arrow bounce off of it, and then hit me in the eye. One unlucky arrow managed to scrape along my Haki finger on its way out, burst into flames, and burn down a good acre of vegetation.

I made a mental note to figure out how to replicate that last one, _after_ I figured out how to shoot straight. It at least had the desired affect; one arrow that had (purely by luck, of course) pierced halfway through the treasure chest Gaimon was using like a snail its shell was enough to convince him to back off. Maybe he was under the assumption that I was competent, maybe he'd run out of ammo, I didn't really know the reason.

Al I knew was that he was gone. Honestly, good riddance.

We avoided each other when we could, and ignored each other if one of us was unlucky enough to stumble across the other. The constant assaults had stopped halfway through the first week, which I could be grateful for. Because now I could focus on what I needed to dedicate my time towards; preparing myself.

I worked around the clock. When there was enough light to see, I would be firing arrows, aiming at anything around me. I would choose knots in the trunks of trees at random, branches that hung low or high and could be knocked off if I calculated my shot correctly, even the occasional bird that I could see through the leaves of the trees. The only one I did manage to hit and subsequently kill was left on the outskirts of Gaimon's camp; a clearing that I had traipsed through twice while running for my second life and had stumbled across once more after shooting an arrow directly into it.

If I wasn't going to get some use out of the bird, then maybe he could. Shooting for sport didn't really appeal to me all that much, and it wasn't like I was going to eat it. Fruit was one thing, but I didn't want meat sitting in my stomach, _festering_ inside my body.

When the sun went down and it got too dark to see my hand in front of my face, I would use the Haki covering my finger and a rock to strike some sparks on the branches I'd shot down during the day. Then, by the light of my campfire, I would go about making arrows and trying to manipulate the strange energy that I now found myself with.

Haki was, succinctly put, _fucking weird_. All I really knew about it was that it was life energy given form, but there was very clearly a disconnect between it and me whenever I focused on it. It just didn't feel like it belonged to me, and I guess in a way, it really didn't.

This wasn't my body, and I couldn't really tell if this was my Haki by birth-right or by gift. The fact that it was part of me at all kind of implied that I should have been able to use it, and so I spent some time trying to see if I could make it spread.

It didn't work out for me. The furthest I managed to get was bullying it into forming a bit of a point on my fingernail, which meant that I was going to be spending the rest of that night sprucing up my collection of arrows.

Time passed as slowly as one might imagine it would without sleep to offset its passage. I spent my days constantly on the move, shooting off my arrows and allowing them to set my perimeter for the night. Evenings were dedicated to fixing up and restocking on my arrows, a process which took less time every day, what with my actually starting to hit my targets and being able to retrieve them, and simple experience. Nights, when the waves were usually audible far from the beach and the forest was alive with the chatter of insects, were when I settled in and willed my Haki to move, grow, flourish.

It was like a muscle. And now that this freakish regeneration my body had would make any form of strength training pointless (if it could reattach entire limbs without a hitch, microscopic tears between cells probably closed up before they could ever happen, or didn't bother to generate new cells to fill in the holes and pulled the pre-existing ones back together), Haki was the only muscle I could exercise.

Unfortunately, it was one of those muscles that I couldn't monitor the progress of. There had been no spread of darkness across my body, no noticeable shifts in density or even colour. After the first month was up, I was starting to move it around my finger and create enough of a displacement to watch the ripples of it against my skin, but a single index finger was still all I could cover with it.

Maybe I just wasn't willing it hard enough, I had no idea. I would need to ask someone proficient in Haki use the first chance I got or stumble across a breakthrough, whichever came first.

By the way things were looking, I would be getting that chance earlier than I had been expecting.

I'd arrived at the beach not even a minute ago. The plan had been to collect some different leaves and seashells to see how they would work when fired as part of an arrow. Everything I owned was stashed away in the many pockets of my jacket, from special rocks to my Devil Fruit to the single doubloon I'd found partially buried near the cliff face that I'd seen Gaimon staring at every now and then. My collection of arrows were sheaved through my belt, dangling point up. My bow was hung from my shoulder, and it was in my hand through instinct alone before I'd actually processed what I was seeing.

The goat figurehead stared back at me, rising and falling gently with the waves that lapped up against her hull. A momentary breeze wafted through the area, and I could have sworn it was carrying laughter with it.

Wordlessly, I slung my bow over my shoulder and made my way back into the jungle.

'Straw Hat Pirate' was probably the title I would find myself wishing I had at some point down the line anyway.

There was no reason I couldn't introduce myself to them now.


	3. Fully Engaged Baby-Koala Mode

**A/N** : I, as in real life me, am currently lying in bed in excruciating pain.

For the love of all things golden in this world, don't try to deadlift twice your weight without proper precautions, kiddies. You _will_ fuck your back up.

Please enjoy this while I seek out some painkillers.

* * *

I think I was going to miss this island.

Don't get me wrong, the place sucked in basically every aspect. Every tree looked the same, every landmark I tried to put down so I could properly find my way around would be moved whenever I wasn't looking at it, and my neighbour was a fucking lunatic. Still, there was a certain charm to the certain death that I would have been faced with if I wasn't some sort of undead creature, something alluring in the way it felt like the trees would be watching you whenever your back was turned-

No, wait, this place was the bane of my existence, and it had been for 35 days. I would be glad to leave it behind, even if I had to beg at Luffy's feet to take me with him. It would be easy; I didn't need to eat, sleep or use the restroom, _and_ I would be able to fit into a suitcase so long as I was cut up first!

What wasn't to love about me?

Voices ahead of me were my first indication to unsling my bow. It had been on and off my shoulder over the entire journey, in my hands as had become habit whenever I heard something that may end up being detrimental to my health. This had been the longest it had managed to stay out of them; from Gaimon's camp, where I'd checked first, all the way to here.

And if I wasn't mistaken, 'here' was the cliff-face that Gaimon would occasionally spend his time.

The voices became more pronounced as I crept through the trees, bow in hand and arrow notched in case of emergency. They were speaking in English, which was nice; I was already far enough into the deep end without needing to learn a third language on top of it.

(Italian had never proven itself very useful in my past life, but it was my heritage and it was what I'd grown up listening to.)

There was no mistaking these voices, either. Even if it had been years since I'd last watched an episode of the dub, I could have picked out the voices of the Straw Hat Pirates in a busy crowd. After all, they were all quite… distinct.

Currently, they were chatting with Gaimon about what was on top of the cliff. I wasn't meaning to listen in on Gaimon's life story as I closed the distance ever so slowly, but I was too busy with my own thoughts to really internalise anything that I was hearing, so that sort of meant that his privacy could remain intact, right?

A twig underneath my boot crunched as I carelessly stepped on it. I froze, debating the merits of stabbing myself through the eye with one of my own arrows as I waited for the storm of bullets, swords, and fists to come flying out of the bushes around me. After a minute of nothing happening, I allowed my buttocks to unclench and my hand to stray away from my arrows.

I took another step, and landed on top of some poor dog/monkey hybrid's tail. It shrieked and tore up much of the scenery as it hightailed towards a particularly tall tree, where it alternated between barking at me and giving me the finger with its single hand.

I stopped. The voices also stopped. Slowly and carefully, I scanned the ground around me, and took another step after making sure absolutely everything that could possibly make noise should it be stepped on was far away from my feet.

My foot didn't hit the ground. No, it landed inside the bucket that was sitting in front of me, the steel cap of my boot on tin clanging loud enough to send all the birds in the surroundings trees flying off in a panic. Squaring my shoulders, I took another step, my foot slipping effortlessly into the clown shoe that was on the ground with a cheerful honk.

My shoulders slumped as my head fell forth, veins jumping in my neck as I grimaced down at the ground. Giving my bucket leg an experimental shake elicited nothing but the sound a spin-dryer would make on high speed when everything inside it was covered in zippers. Trying the same with the clown shoe just gave off the allusion that I was going nuts with a squeaky toy.

Now, see, the plan I had been hoping for was to somehow impress the owners of that nifty little boat I'd come across not too long ago. My thoughts had been going along the lines of shooting a fly out of the air with a perfectly aimed arrow and riding off into the sunset. Oh yeah, and somehow surviving along the way, that would have been nice too.

All I would have needed was a stealthy entrance to show off my skillz. Just to showcase how useful I could be in a fight, maybe run around a little bit and make their heads spin. If they never saw me coming, then they would definitely want me on their side, right?

With all the grace of a man who had died and then given up on life, I took another step with my bucket leg. It connected against something solid and, by the sound of it, metallic. Curious despite myself, I glanced up, my eyes widening to the point of physical discomfort as I watched the naval mine slowly rolling across the ground, branches and leaves and entire bushes being crushed mercilessly beneath its weight.

Slowly, so slowly that it didn't even look like it was moving, so slowly that it was barely a whisper on the wind, the naval mine dinked against the dog/monkey hybrid's tree. A sharp intake of breath caused my stare to shoot up into the branches, where the dog/monkey hybrid was staring open-mouthed at the explosive resting against its home. I shifted, barely rustling the clothes I was wearing, and the creature's head shot up to stare at me. Poor thing's eyes were so wide that I could make out my reflection in them.

Moving at a pace that indicated that it didn't want to be moving at all, the hybrid gestured towards the explosive, its eyes never leaving mine as it shook its head back and forth. Consciously holding my breath, I nodded, tiptoeing as best I could in my bucket and clown shoe until I was within poking distance of the mine.

I would just throw it in some random direction and not think about the consequences. Yeah, that sounded like a good plan. Why was it even here in the first place? Dunno, didn't want to distract myself by caring.

Wrapping my hands around two of the spires poking out of the bomb's surface, I shifted my weight until I could actually move the damn thing. I must have picked up that hunk of metal with more care than I'd ever picked anything else up, living or dead. I could just barely see my new friend from the corner of my eye; it was sweating enough for a puddle to have formed beside my feet.

Just roll it into the jungle, I told myself. Just roll it into the jungle, never ask any questions, never think about it again and it'll never be relevant ever ag-

"Hi!"

A smiling face and straw hat were suddenly all I could see. I know that was the moment that I dropped the naval mine, because that was also the moment that the dog/monkey hybrid screamed in falsetto.

Or that could have been me.

Or maybe it was the bomb.

It probably wasn't the smiling face; that didn't change even while we were being engulfed in a massive explosion.

 **XxX**

For a single, beautiful moment of clarity, everything in my screwed up, miserable existence made _perfect_ sense.

As I held that shrapnel in my hands… and limbs… and eyes, watching the world light up with gorgeous certainty, I felt as though the sun was setting in front of me. A glorious, tiny sun that I was now the epicentre of, that I couldn't see because there were tears in my eyes and couldn't hear because my ears were ringing with the praise of the universe.

My feet left the ground. That was due to the explosive force of the naval mine detonating at my feet, but I like to look back on the experience as my ethereal, fleeting understanding of reality trying to take me away to a better place before I could be corrupted once more. The trees just wanted to hug me, and I wanted to hug them too, but I was just a bit too enthusiastic and ended up going straight through them head-first.

See, it wasn't about living or dying. It was never about that, when you wanted to think about it. It was about existing, about knowing you were there. It was about the universe having your mark, it was about leaving your evidence for everybody to see, whether they wanted to or not.

I couldn't see as I crash-landed in the dirt, because there were chunks of metal scratching at the back of my eye-sockets. I could hear a little bit, but that was mostly just people screaming. I think Gaimon was shooting me in the head again, but I couldn't care less about him right now. I had my answers.

It didn't matter if I continued onwards forever or faded into the obscurity of nothingness, so long as I _blew everything the fuck up_.

…Aaaand then another bullet bounced off my forehead, and I forget everything that I had been thinking about.

"My bucket! My shoe!" I could vaguely make out Gaimon yelling something. I reached up to my ear, felt around blindly for a moment, and then yanked out what felt like a fern from where it was getting comfortable with my eardrum. I repeated the motion for my other ear, and suddenly I could hear again; I could hear the **_bang bang bang_** of Gaimon's gun as he shot at me in what must have just been habit at this point. "My bomb! You _bastard!_ "

I would have rolled my eyes, if I had them with me. Doing my best to ignore the tattoo that was being beaten habitually into my forehead, I groped at my face, trying to find some purchase on whatever it was that had impaled me. Eventually, my finger hooked around something that definitely wasn't supposed to be up there, and the noise that occurred when I pulled it out of my head was enough to bring even Gaimon pause.

The skin, bone, and cartilage of my face was already pulling itself back together as I ran my hand that was missing three fingers down my body. My coat was still here and felt like it was in one piece, my arms, chest and stomach were missing chunks in random places, hips were missing entirely, and when my hand got down to where my legs should have been, something circular and wet tapped against it.

An image entered my brain, one of me lying on the ground while propped up on one elbow, my body distorted and genuinely disturbing to look at. The weird ball thing nudged at my fingers again and rolled onto my palm when I hesitantly offered it, and I did my best to brush away any dirt or twigs from it before raising it to my face.

There was only so many things that it could possibly be, and yes, I _was_ doing my absolute best to not even think about exactly what was happening to me in that moment.

Out of everything I'd experienced on this island, the feeling of my eyeball leaping back into its socket, spinning around a few times, and finally settling down was the strangest sensation to date. I blinked (technically winked) as it stopped spinning, the blurry images it was providing me sharpening all at once.

The first thing I saw was the barrel of Gaimon's gun.

"…Don't you fucking-"

 **BANG.**

I flinched back as the hammer came down; more because there had been a very loud noise not even two feet away from my face, than out of fear that _this_ would be the bullet to finally do me in. What I wasn't expecting was the hand that was suddenly covering the barrel of the gun, and the skin that swelled out to the point of almost poking me in the [horribly mangled] nose before snapping back and sending the bullet somewhere into the trees.

My one current eye and its ruined depth perception followed along the arm connected to that hand, noting the way the skin rippled as the hand settled back into its proper shape. I got to the red vest, the messy black hair, and lastly the pristine straw hat sitting atop his head before he finally tilted his head and spoke.

"Why are you shooting him, Old Guy? Can't you see he's already hurt?"

Of course, the matter of whom was responsible for my injuries was not to be brought up, apparently.

My knight in shining sandals glanced over his shoulder with an appraising look. All I could offer him was a wave, after checking which hand had the most fingers left.

The right one, if you were wondering.

Gaimon gaped, his comically large mouth hanging wide open as his gaze shifted between Luffy and myself quickly enough to disorient someone who wasn't insane. Brandishing his gun, he waved it at me, his enormous afro shaking back and forth with his motions. "I'm shooting him because he's a monster!"

Still propped up on an elbow, I raised a hand to interject with something insulting to Gaimon's height and living conditions, when something behind his shoulder distracted me. Actually, I was honestly a bit distracted at first that I could even see over the guy's shoulder when I was practically horizontal against equal ground, but the view it afforded me quickly blew that right out of the water.

I watched - probably not as shocked as I should have been - as my leg came hopping around one of the many trees surrounding the cliff, my boot on its foot and in perfect condition. Balanced on top of it, sideways, was my waist, and balanced on top of _that_ was my missing eyeball, along with a few other things I couldn't exactly make out at that distance. My jeans were tied around my butt in an elaborate enough knot for me to figure out where my thumbs had been blasted off to, and my belt had been stuffed into my boot and was trailing after my body parts like a tail.

The collection of body parts hopped right past Gaimon. The scream he let out once he noticed what had just pushed past him was almost perfect; the only thing that would have made it better would have been the capability to record it and then listen to it on repeat for the rest of my existence. Now that the ambiguous pile was closer, I could see that most of the miscellaneous items were just my bow, along with piles of either arrows or flesh or, or in some cases _and_ , bones.

The eye hopped off the pile and smacked me in the forehead. I accidentally obscured my vision completely when I reached up to push it into position, and once my hand was clear everything had been assimilated. Pushing myself up, I wobbled after trying to put weight on a leg that apparently still wasn't present, almost as soon as I noticed where said limb actually was. With an annoyed sigh, I plucked my bow and a single arrow from the ground, welcoming my depth perception back with open arms as I adjusted to the rustling leaves and fired.

One of the branches that were keeping my leg and boot hostage high up in a tree that had just managed to escape the blast radius was cut off at the base. That set off a chain reaction, vines and branches separating and shattering as they buckled under the weight of my leg. Or, possibly more accurately, my shoes. These things were pretty damn heavy, you know.

I pumped my fist in victory over the fact that I actually managed to _hit_ my target, momentarily forgetting that I had company. I then remembered a second later, and tried to sigh as I threw my bow back onto my shoulder, only to discover that I didn't have enough air in my lungs to go through with it. So instead, I deflated somewhat, and then continued on to the ground in order to grab my belt and all the arrows that I had left. Holding the pile of arrows between my teeth, I ignored the splinters I was probably getting all over my tongue and gums, securing the belt around my waist so I could start putting all of my ammunition back.

Had I the resources and the knowhow to build myself a quiver, I would have done so long ago. Nodding to myself as I made the plans to come into possession of one at the first opportunity, I finished cleaning up after myself, pushing the bit of bone that was sticking slightly out of my neck back inwards with a painful click, before finally turning towards Gaimon.

A drunken hop wasn't the most intimidating means of advancing on someone, but Gaimon still started edging backwards regardless. I can tell you right now that I was smiling at the man, and I was doing my utmost to make it the friendliest expression I'd ever aimed at another person.

It didn't seem to put him at ease. If anything, he tensed even further before I closed my eyes and tilted my head to the side happily.

"Did I hear you say that was your bomb?"

I counted to three and a half before I heard the screams. My smile widening to include a few teeth, I opened my eyes, not paying any attention to the way they twitched as I launched myself after Gaimon's retreating form.

Unfortunately for him, it was at that moment that my leg decided to be a fucking hero. Good job leg, you're still my favourite limb.

At first, I thought the rustling of leaves behind me was just one of the many animals on the island moving around. I didn't pay it any of the attention that could be spent fantasising about hanging Gaimon upside-down from a tree for two days, until something slammed into what remained of my right thigh, and I felt the familiar weight of steel caps drag me down once more.

The impact sent me flying forward a few extra feet. My foot slid after it hit the ground, the added speed bringing me close enough to reach out and touch Gaimon's hair if I wanted to. The last of my muscles had just finished stitching themselves back together as I planted all of my weight upon the foot that was already touching the ground, and swung my newly-reattached limb in a picture perfect penalty kick.

"DON'T LEAVE YOUR MINES LYING AROUND, FUCKWIT! YOU'LL KILL SOMEONE!"

Had Gaimon been wearing anything other than a treasure chest, I'm confident that he would have tasted my boot. Fortunately for him, the ancient wooden box held, and he was merely sent flying through the air, above the treetops and rapidly becoming nothing more than a star in the sky. My shout followed after him and continued to echo around the trees, which almost made me miss his response as it came drifting back to me on the wind.

"THAT WAS THE PLAN!"

Grumbling naughty words in five different languages (only moving on from one when I ran out of vocabulary for it), I shook my leg in an effort to bring some feeling back into my foot, not even bothering with surprise when the fuzzy sensation left it and it was brought back under my full control. This body was weird; sometimes I could feel things, other times I couldn't, and occasionally I would have to wave a severed body part around a little bit before it caught on to the fact that I wanted it put back where it had come from.

So, I mean, what better place for me than a Pirate Ship, right?

I turned around, hands going into a couple of my jacket's pockets. Tapping a fingernail against the coin I could feel in the left one, I chose to look at Luffy, giving him a quick once-over. He looked very much like he had in the manga and anime. Add in the fact that he'd gone from 2-D to 3-D, and I could see now that all the games I'd seen in recent years for the One Piece franchise were remarkably accurate with their character models.

He looked… human. _Normal_. For some reason, I hadn't been expecting that.

"You own the ship that I saw down on the beach?" I crossed my arms and raised my eyebrows. I could see three other people from the corner of my eye; Zoro, Nami, and Usopp. My lips twitched at that, looks like I was _early_.

 _Goodie_.

"Yep!" Luffy's voice brought my attention back to him, and do you know how difficult it was to not smile at his sheer enthusiasm?

Well, actually, it wasn't as difficult as I would lead you to believe. Mainly because once I heard his response, I was throwing myself onto my knees, clasping both hands in front of my face and trying to ignore the arrow that had just punctured my stomach and was now scratching my spine. If it were anyone else in my position, I would have made a joke about how quickly they were on their knees after only a single word from the future King.

"Please take me with you!"

Unfortunately, I was too busy begging to laugh at myself.

"I can't stay on this island any longer! I'll go insane!" I shuffled forward on my knees, intent on shaking my hands in Luffy's face for emphasis. I ended up catching my jeans on a root that went further into the ground than I thought it did, and falling flat on my face.

Not to be deterred, I groped blindly until my hand caught Luffy's leg, which I then used to pull myself across the ground. Damn, kid was solid. I think I would have been jealous if I wasn't able to do long and short division in my head.

"This is hillbilly Hell! Gaimon hates me because my parents bred within their species!" I have no idea how Luffy could possibly remain completely still as I clambered up his body, somehow ending up on his shoulder, staring into his eyes by virtue of leaning so far over his head that one of the discs in my spine had already shifted out of proper alignment. I was significantly taller than him, and no doubt heavier, yet he was having no problem supporting me. "I think he does… _things_ with his animals!"

Luffy tilted his head to the side, almost throwing me from my perch. He opened his mouth, probably to say something if I were to take a random guess, when Nami cut him off from behind us by clearing her throat.

Luffy twisted around so he was facing her, taking me along for the journey. I gave her one single glance, still clutching onto Luffy's shoulders like a frightened cat, where I would remain until we were safely off the island and they were too far gone to turn around and dump my ass back here.

She looked just like I was expecting her to look. Much like Usopp and Zoro, both of whom were flanking her with their hands on their weapons. Nami said nothing to either of us, only running her eyes over me slowly and then shaking her head at Luffy. I gripped Luffy's shoulders harder in protest, wrapping my legs around his waist and silently daring all three of them to try doing something about it.

I had now fully engaged Baby Koala mode.

Now, this wasn't how I had been expecting my first meeting with the Straw Hat Pirates to go. It certainly wasn't how I _wanted_ it to go, but really, I wasn't all that surprised. I'd been having grand visions of wowing them and having a red carpet rolled out after I accepted the invitation. This was a slightly less cool series of events, but everyone who lays claims to coolness is at least slightly less cool than they think they are anyway, so I couldn't really complain.

Besides, I knew from having two sisters, one older and the other younger, both of whom were a lot smaller than me, that Baby Koala mode was unbeatable. I _never_ won.

"He keeps shooting me!" I whined. My voice had cracked at the beginning of the sentence and I had gone with it, because that was air I wasn't getting back any time soon. I felt pathetic, but I also felt like getting the fuck off this hopeless rock, so I could get over it.

Luffy glanced at me, and then his neck continued on in the same direction so he could look at Nami. I blinked down blankly at the skin that I could _see_ stretching beyond normal human limits, vaguely wondering if Luffy would get annoyed at me if I poked it. See, I had been expecting to witness the Gum Gum Fruit in action before we left the island (because there would be a we leaving this fucking island), just not this close.

It looked freaky as fuck.

 _I liked it_.

Weirdly straining and yet still relaxed skin was suddenly replaced with Luffy's face. I probably would have jumped if he wasn't wearing the goofiest expression I'd ever seen. He looked like he was in the middle of the hardest decision of his life.

"I never ate a Devil Fruit," I whispered to him conspiratorially.

Luffy's eyes lit up, and in that moment, I knew that I had won.

Fuck you, Rare Animal Island. Casket _outtie_.

 **XxX**

Fuck you, Rare Animal Island. Fuck you in the shallow reefs and likely promiscuous tropics, you goddamn whore.

I was definitely pouting as I sat among the branches of one of the trees overlooking Gaimon's camp. I'd been forced to act as the guide after Luffy insisted that the treasure chests that had been on top of the cliff be brought to my fellow castaway, and the look I was given when I suggested we just keep them and blow up the island from a safe distance was a mixture of amusement and disappointment.

Maybe I should have suggested we blow up the island from an unsafe distance. Who knows?

Either way, it had led us to trudging back through the jungle, and not in the direction I wanted to be going. If I was wearing a watch, I would have been checking it every few seconds and then giving off an obnoxiously loud sigh, but unfortunately I was all out of watches.

I had to make do with just the obnoxious sighs. It was after the seventh one that I had been banished to wait in the tree branches instead of with everyone else on the ground. Honestly, I was kind of experimenting with their limits after number three.

So that was fine by me. The trees had become my friends while I was here. I still hated all of them, but they gave me a nice place to perch up high. I loved heights, the closer to the sky the better. Now that I was less likely to drop from wherever it was that I was hunkered down and shatter like a vase, that enjoyment was only multiplied.

So I sat in my tree and the others sat on the ground, with Nami, Usopp and Zoro sending me looks that I probably wasn't supposed to notice and me ignoring the looks they were probably thinking were discreet. I spent my time whittling at one of my arrow's head with a rock that I carried in my jacket, just to make it nice and shiny and sharp and especially killy. You never knew when you needed something especially killy to be flying through the air and doing some killy.

Eventually, after having taken so long that I was actually a bit worried that I'd ended the guy, Gaimon stumbled into his camp, followed by a small army of his animals. Paying the thing that may have had some tiger in it no heed as it stared up at my tree and drew a line along its throat with its finger, I leant along the branch until the only thing keeping me from plummeting was divine intervention, watching as the Straw Hats chatted with Gaimon for a moment, before Luffy shattered the lock on one of the chests in his hand and ripped the lid open.

…The thing was empty? Seriously?

Gaimon's face fell far enough to start knocking on the gates of Hell. I could see Luffy's expression tighten from where I was sitting, before he turned to his crew and gave them a simple nod.

Zoro had his swords out in an instant, the lock falling from the chest he'd carried to the clearing. Usopp and Nami were both a bit more subtle; Usopp had a tiny hammer and chisel in hand, while Nami was doing… something with the lock, I couldn't see from my angle. Within seconds of each other, the locks all fell from the chests and they popped open.

Empty, empty… and empty.

Gaimon was crying, I could hear his sobs even being as far away from them as I was. None of the pirates seemed to have the slightest idea of what to do; Luffy was the first person I would have turned to for something delicate like this, funnily enough, but he was just standing still, his hat casting a shadow over his eyes.

My hand drifted into my pocket as I fell back against the trunk of the tree, taking a deep breath for the express purpose of blowing it out as a massive sigh. The guy had been a massive pain in my ass; he'd actually tried to plug a bullet into my skull and kill me, but I was still feeling sorry for him.

It was with a particularly loud sob from below that my hand closed around the object in my pocket. My spine straightened upon contact with the cool metal, and with more care than was probably necessary, I pulled the coin from my pocket.

It was large, not a perfect circle, and pretty heavy too. On one side was a beautiful etching of what could have been a galleon, not that I was qualified to tell you what type of ship was what. The other side was scratched beyond all belief, but a few smudges of different colouring suggested that there had been something there at some point in the past.

That wasn't really what held my attention, though. I was more thinking about _where_ I'd come into possession of this coin; at the base of the cliff that Gaimon and the Straw Hats had been talking. The base of the cliff that had kept him separated from those treasure chests for so long.

The thing could have been worth a lot. It might have even been solid gold.

I didn't hesitate to flick it off my finger, sending it plummeting with thankfully impressive accuracy to land at Gaimon's feet.

At least a dozen pairs of eyes snapped up to me in that moment. The only person or animal that wasn't looking at me was Gaimon, and that only changed once he had picked the coin off the ground and brushed the dirt away from it. I held his stare alone, ignoring everything else around him, and gave a single shrug of a single shoulder.

He opened his mouth to say something, but I was already climbing to my feet before he could start. Hopping to the next tree over, I disappeared into a patch of leaves that I knew was particularly thick, securing my bow around my shoulder with one hand as I stepped off the branch I was standing on and dropped to the jungle floor.

I was at the beach within five minutes.

 **XxX**

It was entering the twenty-sixth minute of me leaning against a rock and staring at the Going Merry's figurehead dead in the eyes when the Straw Hats stumbled out of the bushes and joined me on the beach.

I blinked, which lost me the staring competition. Narrowing my eyes at the goat and silently promising myself a rematch, I spun around to face the crew, silently raising my eyebrows as they approached me.

Luffy's first words to me weren't exactly what I was expecting. I was guessing maybe an introduction. Whether as Monkey D. Luffy or the future King of the Pirates, either was equally accurate. Maybe a demand for me to explain exactly what the fuck I was, which would have been fair. I was going to be sailing on his ship, after all.

"Join my crew."

I hadn't foreseen that one. Looking back on the moment, perhaps I should have.

I blinked at him, slowly, and glanced around at the rest of the crew behind him. Nami was rubbing her temples, Zoro was staring me right in the eyes with a scarily blank expression, and there were simply no words for the amount of horror on Usopp's face.

Luffy was another story. He was still grinning, still wearing that face of a person who didn't have any clue of where they were or what they were doing, but there was something more behind those eyes. Something that told me that I was now immensely interesting, that now there were _plans_ that involved me. All hiding underneath a straw hat and behind a ridiculous grin.

I did the only thing I possibly could in that situation.

I grinned right back, and cocked my head to the side.

"After you then, Cap'n."


	4. He Was Delicious

Getting a ship ready to sail was confusing to my primitive, landlubber mind.

Words were being thrown around that I'd never heard before outside of movies and stories. A different name would appear for every piece of rope I picked up, and everyone was too busy to explain any of what was happening to me. Even Luffy was being more helpful than I was, and I'd seen him sneak into the kitchen four times in as many minutes.

Finally, after my eighth attempt of finding some hatches to batten down, Nami took pity on me. By which I mean she told me to get off and push in a tone that suggested that she very desperately wanted to hurt me. It took me a moment to realise that she was actually being serious; the water we were anchored in was so shallow that the bottom of the boat was touching sand.

The look on her face when I picked up the anchor and slung it over my shoulder with no difficulties made the momentary humiliation completely worth it. The look on everyone's faces when I shoved the Going Merry out into open waters and crossed the distance in a single hop were various and no less amusing.

And then we'd hit the first wave, and I'd completely lost my balance. Seeing as I was standing on the edge of the boat and I still had a heavy as fuck anchor tossed over my shoulder, that meant that I'd already fallen off the boat within my first minute of properly being on board.

At least I'd managed to hook the anchor around the railing before going into the drink, so I didn't inconvenience my new crew any more than strictly necessary.

One application of Luffy's stretchy arm later had me clinging to the rigging about a meter down from the crow's nest. Once I'd hacked up all the bugs that had ended up in my mouth from the brief journey, I could really appreciate how beautiful the ocean looked from so high up.

The rigging was where I spent my first half hour out at sea. It satisfied both my antisocial nature and my lust for heights, and the linear path all the ropes made ensured my bow wouldn't get caught on any of them, an annoyance I'd always had to deal with back on Rare Animal Island with the constant branches appearing from nowhere.

I used all of the more annoying ones to build a campfire every night.

No, I'm not spiteful.

After half an hour of listening to nothing but the crashing waves, something odd occurred to me. Namely; I was on the Going Merry, otherwise known as the initial vessel of the Straw Hat Pirates, and I was hearing nothing but the crashing waves. Blinking myself out of the stupor I'd fallen into, I glanced… up at the deck?

Huh, apparently at some point I'd flipped over so that I was hanging upside down from my feet. I couldn't have been in this position long; I wasn't feeling dizzy in the slightest. Then again, I could have been like that for hours, seeing as I wasn't even sure there was blood in my body to rush to my head.

This body could take a lot of punishment, especially around the skull area, but it had been breached before, mainly by the jaws of some sort of hybrid animal. Afterwards, the flesh would always close over, but whatever blood I'd lost wouldn't come back to me. Eventually, I'd just stopped bleeding entirely.

Maybe I still had some left somewhere, but it didn't really make a difference that I had noticed. Both motor functions and aesthetics hadn't changed at all. Maybe blood was just too alive for me? After all, apparently, **_death amasses_**.

My mental tangent came to an end when Nami walked out of the kitchen and whistled through her fingers. I jolted at the noise, almost unwrapping myself from the rigging, and then realised that I was poking holes through my fingertips with one of my arrows.

Whoops.

"Lunch is ready!" She called, and was immediately surrounded by all three other men on the ship. Their speed was impressive; I hadn't even noticed any movement along the deck.

I snorted to myself, twisting my legs out of the ropes and falling down to the deck, where I managed to land on my feet with no stumbling at all.

One Piece oceans were not the ideal place to develop your sea-legs. But one could only stare at the ocean for so long before needing a shift in scenery.

"I don't eat." I waved off Nami's raised eyebrow, turning to make my way towards the front of the boat and slipping my bow off my shoulder. "Luffy can have my portion."

"Thanks… uh…" I glanced over my shoulder as Luffy's head poked out of the kitchen. Behind him, I could see Usopp and Zoro loading up plates and wolfing down their portions as though their lives depended on it. Luffy's cheeks were stretched out, and as though that didn't make him hard enough to understand, he was speaking around the massive bone that was poking out of his mouth. "What'schure name?"

I blinked at him, slowly turned my body around to match my neck, and blinked once more, much slower this time. My shoulders were slumped, far enough for my bow to tap against Merry's deck, and I raised my eyebrows to complete the look of unimpressed surprise. "You've already forgotten my name?"

"You never told us," Zoro interjected as he stepped out of the kitchen, raising his plate in what must have been ingrained muscle memory as Luffy took a swipe at it with his teeth. The swordsman smacked him in the face with the bottle he was carrying in his other hand, and Usopp's cry of despair was easily heard over the waves when Luffy's head slammed into the food he'd stockpiled and the entire plate disappeared, "Seeing as you were on an island with basically no company, I thought you didn't remember if you had one."

"Forget his name!" Nami waved her arms through the air, the errant limbs coming to rest in my direction. Her eyes were narrowed, not that I was taking any notice of her, seeing as nobody else was and I wanted to be one of the cool kids who conformed to societal expectations. "What do you mean you don't eat!?"

"A better question is," Zoro interjected, his tone far more commanding than what Nami had managed. Oddly enough, it hadn't changed a single bit from the tone he had been using to comment on my competence for sharing, "you managed to survive an explosion and put yourself back together, and you were in the water earlier with no issues. So if that wasn't a Devil Fruit, then what exactly _are_ you?"

It was at that moment that I realised exactly what it was that I had said and done. It was also at that moment that I realised where I was, who I was talking to, and most importantly, _when_ I was in the timeline.

This was the _East Blue_. The _early_ East Blue, with no built-up tolerance for the bizarre beyond a few Devil Fruits, and an extremely distrustful Navigator.

I was very careful not to move my bow as I turned around to fully face Nami. My eyes, still narrowed from questioning Luffy, automatically went down to the hand she had on her weapon, and in that moment I made a decision. Was it the correct decision? Maybe, maybe not. All I knew was that at least for now, no matter how much I wanted to, I _couldn't_ fully trust the Straw Hats.

Coming from a different dimension and having a least arbitrary knowledge of a possible future without my interference? That was a lot of information to give someone, no matter who they were. I know I wouldn't trust myself with knowledge like that, and Nami was too much of a wild-card at the moment. If I wasn't sold out to the next tyrant we were cued up to meet, then I would be paddling back to Rare Animal Island and begging Gaimon to let me stay rent-free until Life caught up and tore me a new one.

That was all assuming they actually believed me, mind. If they didn't, then no amount of Baby Koalas would be able to keep me on this deck. If by some miracle I was allowed to stay for the duration of the journey… who was I kidding, I wouldn't be able to play Luffy forever. Just considering that as a strategy made me feel like a complete prick.

They had no obligation to me, and if I ignored the morality that I never really wanted to listen to in the first place anyway, then I had no real obligation to them either. Their lives weren't perfect, not by a long shot, but they weren't bad enough to need my intervention. They always worked things out, I was just on their ship until further notice.

Yet, at the same time, _I was on their ship until further notice_. I was part of their crew. If not now, then eventually, they deserved to know.

It would be somewhat impossible to hide a fight to the death with the facsimile of someone either famous or famously dead.

It had also been far too long since I'd last said anything, and I think they were beginning to get antsy.

"…My name's Lucas DeMitri Cask." I started slowly. My spine popped as I straightened it out, which probably meant that part of it had been out of alignment and I hadn't noticed. A slow smile spread across my face as I slung my bow back over my shoulder, a stark contrast to the turmoil I was feeling inside my gut.

Hmm, looks like I was the tallest person on the crew. For now, at least.

"I'm almost twenty years old, and I died not too long ago."

My smile picked up a little bit in one corner as even Luffy stopped eating in favour of staring at me through the kitchen door. Seeing as I had their undivided attention, I figured that a demonstration was in order. After all, they were asking, so it would be rude of me to not deliver.

"I am what you could call an experiment." Sliding the arm that wasn't holding my bow up out of its sleeve, I gripped at the shoulder through my shirt, wrapping my hand around the bone before I began to pull. The limb popped out of its socket at first, and before long, the sound of tearing flesh was beating out even the waves. "An unnatural reanimation of a body damaged beyond what life can maintain."

Eventually, the bone separated. The muscle held out a bit longer, but it was soon torn apart along with everything else. Triumphantly, I held the now severed limb out towards them, probably taking too much pleasure in the way they all flinched back.

The Haki hadn't even faded from my finger.

"No sense of pain." As if on cue, my arm twitched. _Something_ slid out of Luffy's mouth and hit the ground; I sure as shit wasn't cleaning that up afterwards. "No need to eat or breathe." Spinning my arm around by the exposed bone, I held it up against what had remained on my body, gathering up my jacket as my body stitched itself back together with a cacophony of clicks.

"No soul." I finished quietly, though not exactly quiet enough to avoid the rest of the crew's ears.

I don't think they knew what to say. All they could do was watch as my arm spun around in its socket a few times until it was properly lined up, which was when I was finally able to slip my jacket back on. Taking in their wide eyes and slack jaws, I turned around, not really expecting any further distractions after that display.

I really shouldn't have been surprised that someone called out to me before I could vacate the scene. What did surprise me, however, was _who_ had decided to stop me in my tracks.

"S…So how good are you with that bow?"

Usopp's tone was slow, but it definitely wasn't scared. Glancing over my shoulder, I took in his serious, shrewd expression, and I couldn't help myself.

I smiled. Not the smug grin or sardonic smirk I would usually don during conversations, nor the blank expression I'd refined since the beginning of my teen years in an attempt to avoid interaction with others. The challenge in Usopp's raised eyebrow just sweetened the deal; I almost wanted to laugh at myself as the plan formed in my mind.

The plate he was holding was probably the one that had been prepared for me. It was a nice sentiment, no matter how pointless it had turned out.

The entire tone of the conversation had shifted. Everyone had… somewhat relaxed, not even moving when I unhooked my bow and looked off to the side of the ship. I couldn't even tell if there was something I would have to thank Usopp for later; the timing of the conversion had been too perfect for it to be accidental.

Of course, I could just be overthinking how much stock the sharpshooter was putting into my well-being.

Spotting nothing usable to the side, I turned back to the front of the ship, tilting my head around the figurehead and immediately setting my sights on an outcropping we were due to pass in around a couple of minutes. For whatever reason, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was significant somehow, which probably didn't mean all that much in the long run anyway.

"You see that outcropping in front of us?"

I was going to be flinging a rock attached to a stick at it; what damage could I possibly do?

A shuffling of cloth and the squeak of wooden planks expertly but not masterfully put together were all I needed to know that Usopp had come up alongside me. With far quieter movements, a flash of green from the corner of my eye told me exactly where Zoro had moved to, and it was a testament to Nami's skill that I couldn't for the life of me determine her position even with these heightened senses.

The crashing from the kitchen told me all I needed to know about Luffy. I guess having a body made of rubber for upwards of a decade made him more or less desensitised to shit like me.

"I see it," Usopp confirmed. He'd taken a step forward, which afforded me the opportunity to see that he'd lowered his goggles over his eyes.

"Well, I'll give us a minute to get closer." With that, I hopped forward, clearing the distance between the mast and the front of the ship in that one bound. I didn't dare land on the figurehead, not when I knew how much that position meant to Luffy, but I was close enough to the front of the ship that I would be able to lean against the railing if I fell backwards the tiniest amount.

I then proceeded to do exactly that, twisting on my heel and crossing my arms as I slouched against the wood.

"Now, don't bother looking at it, because I'll never hit it." My chest still felt hollow as I looked out over them all. Arranged out on the deck and staring up at me expectantly, even if Luffy still had his chest up in the kitchen and was still inhaling his food, Usopp was trying to split his attention between me and guarding his plate from our Captain's roaming hands, Zoro had tilted his body so his swords weren't aimed at me but still close enough, and Nami was giving me a look so guarded that it made me feel like the bottom of my stomach was an eternity away. They were stuck with me now, no matter how badly I fucked their lives up from this point onwards. What if I didn't even know enough to run damage control when everything began to fall apart around us?

"I'll aim for it, but you'd best look about five metres off…" I gestured vaguely to the side with my Haki finger, doing my best to ignore the chill that ran down my spine whenever I dug myself too far into a thought exercise with no discernible answer, "thatta way."

 _One step at a time,_ was the mantra I would always tell myself whenever that chill surfaced. Whenever I would be faced with a question that I couldn't answer, the questions that would be best left without thought. Funnily enough, that usually happened whenever I took a shower. I blamed my dollar-store philosophy and 21st century arrogance. _Take it a step at a time. You'll figure something out._

Yes, this time was a bit different to all the hours I had wasted away pondering what existence had been like before time and space, and what it would be like once time and space had run their course. I turned around and slid an arrow from my belt, blowing a speck of imaginary dust as hundreds upon hundreds of hours of non-stop practice took over my muscles and guided my hand.

Luffy would still be Pirate King. Nobody would be able to screw that up even if they tried; this was a shounen world. Right now, I had to focus on where I would be standing in three years, and the first step down wherever that path lead was me shooting at this giant rock with a much smaller rock.

I gave myself five seconds. One to gauge the wind, two to judge the distance, one to adjust the angle of my bow so it was slightly higher, and one to take the swaying ground into account. If I was a two-dimensional character, this would be the moment when my sound-track began to play. The tip of the outcropping was in my sights, and with the confidence that I had only really started to feel within the last few days, I let the arrow fly.

I swear I heard Zoro mutter from behind me, "Where is that music coming from…?"

I didn't even care. I didn't care if there was music. I didn't care if a stray wave washed up and knocked me overboard. The shot was more than good; from where I was standing, it looked like it was perfect.

The trajectory was precise, cutting through the air with a faint whistle that I could still somehow hear. Sunlight glistened from the entirety of the arrow, even though nothing I had made it with was even the slightest bit reflective. Hell, I think I even saw the outcropping move a little bit to the left from the corner of my eye.

It was going to hit. It was going to land exactly where I wanted it to land. It was going to prove that I was improving. It was going to prove that _I had a chance_.

I thrust the hand holding my bow into the air triumphantly. The arrow was seconds away from impact. A good few hundred metres, on shaky ground, combating an ocean breeze, and the arrow was going to _hit_.

"YE-"

It happened so quickly that I almost missed it. My eyes were a fraction of a millimetre from being squeezed shut in celebration. There was nothing to indicate what was to come except a shadow in the water, until a geyser was bursting from the base of the outcropping and something was flying through the air.

 _Directly into the path of my arrow._

I watched in horrified slow motion as the dolphin that had just jumped out of the water chirped happily. Its eyes were large and shining, and I think it may have had a blush sticker on either side of its snout. My arm was still in the air as it executed a flawless triple front flip and extended its fins for the landing. My mouth was still warped into a happy grin of satisfaction when my arrow pierced right through the creatures head and out the other side, yanking the majestic creature out of its flight path and pinning it to the tip of the outcropping.

The musical accompaniment came to a screeching stop, record scratch included.

I was frozen as the thin wooden shaft of the arrow gave out under the dolphin's weight, sending it bouncing off a few jutted rocks and plummeting into the waves below. My arm was only just beginning to fall when no less than a dozen fins appeared out of the water in a ring around the dolphin's landing site, before the water was reduced to nothing but froth, jaws, and red.

Lots and lots of red.

The ship was silent while all the distant sharks cleared out of the area. I think there may have been some tears running down my cheeks as what looked like a slightly chewed eyeball broke the surface of the water and turned to give me the most betrayed look I'd ever seen in the detached eye of a dolphin.

As though on some invisible cue, all Hell broke loose.

I screamed and sank to my knees, one arm cuddling my bow to my chest, the other stretched out towards the water as I babbled apologies and prayers on a loop. I think Luffy and Usopp were hitting me with a wooden spoon and a tiny hammer, respectively. I don't know where Zoro or Nami were, but whatever they were doing, I couldn't hear it over the din of my retribution. I was too distraught to really register the fact that I had been knocked off and then climbed back onto the boat twice already until Luffy smacked me off a third time.

I hit the water and went under. I only realised that the water was red when I opened my eyes and came face to face with a shark. I drew back instinctively, the hand that had been going for my arrows stilling when it grinned at me and winked.

Its teeth were red. I gave that a second of thought, promptly shoved that thought aside, and offered the shark a hesitant thumbs up. Either I had accepted its gratitude, or I'd just given the go-ahead for the shark to eat me too. Which, come to think of it… would _really_ suck for the shark. I did still have a Devil Fruit in my pocket, after all.

I flinched away when the shark drifted past me, the movement not doing me much good when I had to move through water. The shark didn't even seem to notice that I had moved, merely smacking its tail into me as it went past. The surprisingly powerful appendage lifted me right out of the water, sent me right over the railing of the Going Merry-

And eye-first into a sword being held by a man who certainly hadn't been on board the ship the last time I was here.

I would have fallen to the ground if the sword wasn't keeping me upright. Unfortunately, it was also poking my brain and had completely eradicated my depth perception, so the ground was where I would end up anyway after inevitably tripping over something.

So really, he was just delaying the inevitable.

The man holding the sword, whom was Johnny if memory served me correctly, stared at me with eyes wide enough to peek out around the edges of his shades. His head tilted down a bit; no doubt he'd noticed my bow, because he went from shock to apoplectic rage in between the time it took for his heart to beat.

"YOU BASTARD!" Were the first words he ever said to me. I was honestly a bit insulted; so what if my parents weren't married?

Johnny yanked the sword out of my face, and I tilted my head forth a little bit to help him with that. As soon as the blade had been taken away, the destroyed portion of my head pulled itself back together, good as new. Johnny swung at me, his sword carving through my shoulder, my body nullifying the damage being done at the exact same pace as it was being inflicted on me.

Standing still while someone went to town on me with a pointy object wasn't something I would have usually done. But Johnny was obviously working through some things, and I would be damned if he didn't owe me at least three favours for that stunt he pulled when I first got back. I did move my bow out of the way whenever he went for that, though; like Hell I was going to let anyone other than me ruin this thing!

"YOU KILLED FLIPPER!" I made my first significant movement then, stepping aside as enough spit to fill a fountain joined the ocean. It didn't help me any, because by the time I was paying attention to him again, Johnny had two swords in his hands, and both of them were going through my eyes before I knew what was happening to me.

"Sorry?" I offered lamely. Don't get me wrong, I still felt bad for what had happened, but that was hardly my fault. After the initial shock had passed, the horror of knowing I'd just taken an innocent life… it hadn't really changed a thing, honestly. The dolphin hadn't even shown up in canon, at least to my knowledge. How important could it have been?

Besides, what was the dolphin going to complain about now that it was dead? I mean, _I_ was dead, and _I_ still had to fight my own battles. I'd even go so far as to say that the dolphin would have a wonderful time compared to my experiences.

"HE WAS ALWAYS SUCH A NICE FISH!" Judging from the noises coming from my own head, Johnny had just twisted the swords. Holy shit Johnny, that's cold-blooded. "HE ALWAYS SHARED HIS FOOD WITH ME AND YOSAKU WHEN WE COULDN'T FIND ANY!"

"Alright, hey, look on the bright side." Heh, it's funny because at the moment I was blind. Figuring that raising my hands would be considered threatening, I instead stepped back until my butt hit the railing, which I then leaned on, arms crossed and lips twitching into a calm smile.

"I'm sure he was delicious."

I'm not certain, but I think someone had to drag Johnny off of me at that point.

 **XxX**

As soon as the swords were out of my head, I was back up the rigging.

Crowds weren't really my thing. Having six other people on Merry's deck already felt claustrophobic enough, but having one of those people be someone who had made a very honest attempt on my life didn't really work to make me feel comfortable. As it was, Johnny was doing his absolute best to not look at me whatsoever, something which Yosaku had also taken to doing after Nami had woken him up.

That was fine by me. Being the centre of attention wasn't fun when it wasn't on my own terms. So I had climbed to the top of the rigging, tangled myself into the ropes by the legs, and had wasted away the rest of the afternoon by observing the members of the crew and our guests from my perch.

Luffy and Usopp had taken to the ship's cannon, where Usopp proceeded to use all but one single cannonball bedazzling our Captain with some pretty damn impressive shots, all things considered. Nami was in and out, usually with a map or compass in hand, tilting the ship this way and that as we carved through the waves. Zoro was slumped over on the upper deck, his swords laying across his lap as he napped. Johnny and Yosaku did circuits around Merry's rooms and features, chatting with everyone whether they responded or not.

Nothing much happened up in the rigging. I didn't have to move, Nami would have told me if I did, so I could enjoy the breeze in my face even if it was only blowing my hair out of my eyes. I could appreciate the majesty that the ocean provided me, not blinking for the hours I was hanging there, simply taking the world in.

It was monotonous. Soothing. The numerous worries I could never get out my head melted away, leaving nothing but an endless blue and enchanting green.

Eventually, when the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, movement from down below drew my eye. I watched as everyone disappeared into the kitchen, Conversation drifting from the open door for a moment until it stopped. Usopp's very distinctive head popped out of the entrance, and he then proceeded to scan the skies, beckoning me into the kitchen as soon as he spotted me.

Separating myself from the rigging the second time around was slightly easier. Just don't tell anyone that I landed on my head this time.

I pushed the displaced fragments of my spine back into position with my Haki finger, pausing just outside of the kitchen doorway to force my head another few degrees to the left so it would be on straight. My neck clicked, painfully may I add, but at least this would allow me to pass as a human until the next time something tore me apart.

With everything in place, I ducked in through the door. There were seats available around the table in the middle of the room, but I instead elected to lean against the doorway, crossing my arms and staring at the map that had been spread out on the table with no amount of comprehension.

"There you are, Cask." I glanced up at Nami, my protest dying on my lips before it could even be made. Right, different naming conventions, whatever. Instead, I just nodded at her, which she returned before we both turned back to the map.

"As I was saying; with good weather, we should reach the Baratie by tomorrow morning." Nami jabbed at a specific spot on the map, which was just as blue as the rest of the paper that wasn't green. Everyone else leaned in, Luffy from atop the table and the other four men from around it. Snapping her fingers, all eyes turned towards Nami as she put a hand on her hip and pointed menacingly at everybody in the room, ending with her finger a few centimetres from Luffy's face. "We're there to recruit our chef, so everyone is going to be on their best behaviour! _Got it?_ "

Zoro and I were the only ones not to nod. I didn't because I didn't need to be told, but I suspected that he either didn't care or wasn't listening in the slightest.

"Great!" Nami clapped her hands sharply, her smile a bit too wide to be friendly. "Now let's talk about our food budget while we're there!"

Everyone groaned, Luffy's voice the loudest by far. I merely rolled my eyes and pushed away from the wall; this topic of conversation meant literally nothing to me. I would go to the crow's nest and put together a few more arrows; I really should have spent my time doing that instead of daydreaming earlier-

"Hold it."

I froze instinctively, one foot still hovering in the air. Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted Zoro pushing away from the table and vacating his seat, his swords knocking against each other as he stalked towards me. I stiffened as he passed me, my body rotating to follow his movements as he strolled to the middle of the deck.

The light in his eye was downright terrifying as he untied his bandanna from his arm.

"It's time for training." His voice definitely wasn't that guttural usually. Zoro tied the bandanna around his head with fewer movements than should have been necessary, drawing one of his blades from its sheath and pointing it directly at my chest. "And it's been a very long time since I last had a dummy that could move."

I blinked at him, very slowly. I then shot a look over my shoulder, more or less praying from the depths of my heart for someone to help me.

Usopp, Johnny, and Yosaku were all wide-eyed and no help at all. Luffy was grinning from ear to ear; even less help than before. I couldn't and still can't really identify the look that Nami gave me, but I'm fairly certain she wasn't expecting good things to come of this.

Well then.

I could have turned around and refused. I could have hung my head and begged. Hell, I could have jumped ship and swum back to Rare Animal Island. In fact, I probably _would_ have done any one of those things if I gave myself time to think about the situation and weigh my options.

So instead, with my bow unsung and an arrow notched, I stepped out into the setting sun

"Bring it on."


	5. A Very Bad Idea

A/N: Four Communities? _Four_? I don't even know what to say. Wait, yes I do.

Holy shit.

* * *

I was prepared for Roronoa Zoro.

I can hear you right now, scoffing at my audacity. Rolling your eyes at the mere thought that I, some nobody from a country whose frontlines consisted of mammals that lay eggs and people who have half a full set of teeth between them, would be ready for one of the greatest warriors of a shounen series. Hell, I would be right there with you, if it wasn't for one crucial detail.

I was _prepared_ for Roronoa Zoro.

I was, by absolutely no means, _ready_ for Roronoa Zoro.

What with my newfound physicality, there was no doubt that I would be highly sought after for any number of reasons. I mean, I only knew Hogback by name and reputation, and just thinking about some of the shit he would get up to if he ever got his hands on me made me want to wrap myself up in the rigging like a cocoon and never leave.

There were _advantages_ to my situation. One of those advantages happened to be the ability to put myself back together if I was cut up into pieces, say by a certain green-haired man who wielded three blades at once. A certain green-haired man who wanted to be the best that the world had to offer, and would let very little get in the way of that goal.

The second I let him know that I had yet to feel pain from any sharp object… let's just say that I should have thought before I garnered the attention of a man happier to be around knives than a misophonic butcher whom had heard one too many 'moos' during his developmental years.

In Layman's terms, I had screwed myself. In Zoro terms, I had… I dunno, proposed, maybe?

Either way, he was currently sprinting at me with a sword in his mouth, and my arrow was still aimed at where he'd been standing when I accepted his challenge. Which, just for the record, happened less than a second ago.

But, as I said, I was prepared for Roronoa Zoro. The plan was still in the formation phase, but with a glorified knife about to take my arm off, I felt as though a prompt response was in demand. And, lucky me, It just so happened that promptness was the one advantage I held.

I pushed off the deck hard enough to rock the boat as Zoro completed his swing, almost launching myself clear over the railing. I'd aimed low enough, though, slamming feet-first into the wood with enough force to actually lift Merry out of the water. She'd yet to set back down in the water before I was kicking off again, my bow levelled at Zoro's back and my Haki imbued finger resting against the arrow held within.

The island had taught me a few things very well. One was how easy it was to put myself together, another was reaffirming just how much I hated animals in general. Zoro was only just beginning to turn around as I let my arrow fly, sparks running along the shaft as it scraped against my finger and subsequently burst into flames. I knew exactly when he realised what had happened, because his eyes bulged out of their sockets and he wrenched the sword in his left hand around the smack the arrow out of the air, knocking it harmlessly into the ocean.

The most valuable lessons Rare Animal Island had blessed me with, however, were thus; speed, and _fire_.

There had been… _something_ that would hang around with Gaimon, _something_ that was a cheetah mixed with some species of reptile. It had been too small to be a comfortable steed for even Gaimon's diminutive stature, but it had been _quick_. Quick to the point of leaving _afterimages_ whenever it moved anywhere.

Now, I'm not saying that I was faster than it. All I'm saying is that it never managed to capture me, at least not alone.

Fire, I feel, was pretty self-explanatory.

Even so, as I watched the arrow extinguish and sink, I couldn't help but feel the slightest bit annoyed. Those were a pain in the damn ass to make by hand; that had been one of _seven_ arrows that I felt were ready to be shot. Not only that, but it was the one that I was actually proud of.

…In hindsight, perhaps setting on fire hadn't been the best choice. In my defence, if I'd had the capability to set things on fire and then shoot them before now, I would probably have been ruling the world with an iron fist.

My displeasure must have shown on my face, because once I'd landed and turned back to Zoro, he was wearing a smirk that indicated he was very happy with himself. He said nothing to me, his lips tilting even further upwards on one side around his sword as he came at me even faster than before. His annoyingly smug visage very quickly became all I could see, and as I ducked underneath a slice that would have bisected my face, I felt an overwhelming urge to punch him in the jaw.

So I slung my bow over my shoulder, slapped the sword out of his mouth with my Haki finger, and punched him in the jaw.

What, did you think I _wasn't_ gonna do it?

The sword that I'd knocked out of Zoro's mouth slid along the deck until it clattered against the mast. Zoro himself reeled back, his head snapping to the side as I followed the movement of my fist through, taking a single step to balance himself as I stumbled to a halt.

It wasn't much, but it was a step better than I had honestly been expecting.

Zoro rubbed at his jaw, clicking it back into place as I hopped back and retrieved my bow from its perch. I probably wouldn't have given the time to clear his head if this wasn't supposed to be a friendly match; I say 'supposed to be' mainly due to the gimlet eye Zoro levelled me with once he'd swept Wado Ichimonji off the deck and clamped his teeth around its handle hard enough to make the muscles in his cheeks bounce.

"You're fast," he muttered, shifting his feet around as I pulled another arrow from my belt, "I can barely see you when you move."

I had nothing to offer him but a grim smile. That, and the arrow that went whistling at his head. It was batted out of the bar just as easily as the first one had been, but it served its purpose; getting his eyes off me.

I sprinted past him, swerving around the tail end of his swing on my way to the mast. I got halfway up it through momentum alone, kicking off once I felt my traction begin to ebb and landing atop the figurehead on one leg. The arrow I had notched left my bow, and I followed along directly behind it, throwing my bow high into the air and cocking my fist back. Hit and run was the only way I was going to get anywhere before Zoro got tired. Considering who we're talking about, I felt silly just thinking that.

Unfortunately, I'd neglected to remember one thing.

Despite all appearances, Zoro wasn't an idiot.

I'm not actually entirely sure how it happened. I think Wado Ichimonji flipped around in his mouth and slid back into its sheath, at which point Zoro caught my arrow between his teeth. After that, there was a blur somewhere near my waist, and I was tumbling along the deck, slamming with no small amount of force into the ship's railing.

Some very choice words left my mouth as I attempted to push myself to my feet. For whatever reason, nothing below the knee on either side of my body was responding, and it took Zoro turning around and spitting the arrow in his mouth out for me to realise why.

Lying on the ground beside him was my left leg. Impaled through the calf like a spit-roast on his left sword was my right leg. Behind him stood the rest of the crew and our two guests, their eyes wide and, in all but Luffy's case, their faces somewhat green.

At least my bow managed to fall directly onto my shoulder and slide into position. I _did_ lose a good third of my height in front of an audience made up of the people I would be living with for the foreseeable future, but I looked cool doing it, so… I guess it all evened out?

Something that sounded like metal on bone distracted me from my musings. While it was disturbing enough that I could identify metal on bone through sound alone, I was more concerned with Zoro sliding my leg off his sword, throwing it back over to me without preamble and kicking the one that was at his feet after it.

"I can barely see you when you move." He repeated, as the leg he'd thrown at me kicked me in the head and then went about reattaching itself to my thigh. I stumbled back to my feet as it spasmed into position, spinning around like a possessed owl's neck before everything settled back into position, pulling my bow from my shoulder and one of my remaining four arrows from my belt as Zoro once again drew Wado Ichimonji and bit down on its handle. "That doesn't mean I can't still cut you if you're not careful."

I couldn't help but roll my eyes as I tapped my heel against the deck twice and took off once more. Great, there went my single advantage.

I didn't take my bow off my shoulder this time, content to drape over the back of Usopp's shoulders as I ran past. I didn't want it being cut to pieces, which as Zoro had just showed me, was a distinct possibility. Instead, I focused on the Haki in my finger, feeling it rise up to my command and harden beyond the lax state I usually left it in.

I used that to flick the sword that had been on a collision course for my neck away (Zoro was really taking advantage of this no dying thing of mine, apparently), opening a hole in his offence for me to try and kick him. My superior speed meant that my foot connected with the underside of his ribs, but his superior _literally everything else_ meant I was running away a second later, with a rapidly closing cut going along the entirety of my arm.

At least the jacket stitched itself up alongside the skin. I would have been _pissed_ if this thing go-

…Fuck, I'm stupid.

I groaned and palmed my face, even as I dug my heels into the deck and gripped the mast with my free hand, effectively turning me in a perfect 180-degrees loop and sending me rocketing back the way I'd come. I took my hand away from my face and cocked it back, having just enough time to see Zoro raise an eyebrow at the shift in tactics before his sword was coming to meet me head-on.

Ignoring the instincts that were screaming ' _fuck, run away!_ ' in the back of my mind was difficult, though as I'd just figured out, it wasn't impossible. Zoro's blade cut clean through my fist as I swung my arm, biting down all the way through my arm until it clanged against my elbow and stopped moving. My arm was already reforming around it, starting at the hand and going up, which meant that Zoro was getting hit in the face with a fist that had, a single heartbeat prior, been split in half.

I wasn't entirely sure if I expected it to work. As I watched Zoro get picked up from the force behind the blow, his feet actually leaving the ground, I couldn't help but feel a bit proud of myself-

 _Until he bounced off the wall beside the kitchen door and came at me with both swords in his hands casting a shadow that looked_ solid _ **what the crap**_ _-_

With a sense of mounting dread, I stepped aside as one sword that looked like three swords stabbed right where my gut had been (did he fucking just…?). I took to the rigging, hoping he would have enough sense to not slice those to pieces, and chanced a glance down at my elbow, where the sword had gotten lodged within the bone.

Wado Ichimonji shone slightly in the sunlight. And that gave me a very bad idea.

I took a look at our surroundings as I absently pulled Wado Ichimonji from my arm, scratching at my chin with the tip of the blade and pretending not to hear Zoro's screams… no, Zoro's _roars_ of rage. I briefly considered using it to itch the inside of my nostril, though I decided against it before my arm could move. I may have been a bit spiteful, but being suicidal after I'd already died would just be greedy.

Still, thinking he could make a fool out of me, huh? The only person making me look inept around here was going to be _me_ , damn it!

An out of place flash of yellow caught my eye, and I glanced towards the back of the ship to see what it had been. Hmm, seems we'd strayed a bit too close to a sandbank while everyone was busy.

Perhaps referring to it as a sandbank was underselling it a little bit. There was definitely sand there, but there were also a few trees, more than a few rocks, and I could see some animals milling about along the edge of it. Going by size alone… I wouldn't say that it could qualify as an island, from what I could see, but it would have been fairly close. Still, it would suffice for getting off the ship before I opened my mouth again.

I wasn't too keen on sinking Merry before we could get out of the East Blue. I wasn't too keen on sinking her at all… ah, screw it, you get the idea.

"This is a really nice sword," I called down to Zoro, where he was standing at the mast and glaring up at me with all the fury of a cartoon guard dog. I wasn't lying; it was a _very_ nice sword. The thing looked beautiful; it was obvious how much care went into its upkeep. Which was only one of the reasons why I tensed my legs and tilted my body so that I was aiming at the sandbank.

"Mind if I keep it?"

I had to bite my lip hard enough for my teeth to meet in the middle to keep myself from cackling out loud. The look on Zoro's face had been indescribable, kind of like apoplectic rage that had been smacked over the head while trying to recover from vertigo. I landed feet first, sliding for a few metres before coming to a stop and turning around-

And having to shield my eyes when a green-haired _meteor_ landed in front of me, displacing so much sand that it all created _waves_ once it reached the water.

" _Give_. _It_. **_BACK_**." One of Zoro's eyes was glowing red. Something was telling me that provoking him any further would be a bad idea.

I hesitated, just for a moment, before opening my big dumb stupid idiot mouth.

"Come and get it."

Pro-tip: never listen to the voices in your head. Ha ha ha, I was learning-!

 _Oh fuck._

Duck under a sword, dance around a sword, get Haki finger into position to deflect sword, take sword through the heart, dodge around debris from a rock that had just been shattered by a sword, remove sword from chest before Zoro may have the pleasure of doing so, wave Wado Ichimonji around in his face to remind him what he's fighting for, rinse, repeat.

If I was going to be going up against some dead dickhead in less than a handful of years, I would need everything I could get.

Except Wado Ichimonji, seeing as Zoro may actually find a way to kill me at this rate. 'Scuse me Aussie, but if I had anythin' in me intestines, I wouldda cacked me tracky dacks by the third swing of his sword. Yes, he _was_ and still _is_ that scary.

I didn't even want the sword. Not that I would tell him that before his rage whipped me into shape.

…Maybe this wasn't the best idea.

…Oh well.

 **XxX**

I _think_ Zoro _may_ have been a _bit_ frustrated with me.

Blocking his swings with his own sword _may_ have made everything worse.

Once it became apparent that we weren't going to be finished anytime soon, the Going Merry had docked alongside our sandbank. Seats were pulled out, drinks were mixed, and I think bets may have been made. I spent my time leading Zoro around on a merry little chase all over our solid land, kicking water at him whenever we went down to the beach, knocking branches back into his face when we went past a tree, and overall doing my utmost best to get him angrier than he had ever been in his entire life.

The reason for this was quite simple.

I _needed_ someone to help get me combat ready, and I needed them some time around about yesterday. Unless I'd guessed entirely wrong, Zoro wouldn't be willing to let me go; not when I could stand there and take anything he could throw at me. Therefore, if he hated me, then I had free practice with one of the crew's top berserkers. If he liked me, then I had free practice with one of the crew's top berserkers, _and_ he would drop me like a rock as soon as Sanji stepped into the picture.

It wasn't the perfect plan, but considering all I had that was solid enough to go off until we reached Reverse Mountain were a few foggy memories of Luffy getting his dumb ass stuck in concrete and being tossed into the ocean, it was the best I was going to get.

Still, maybe I went a bit overboard. Even so, Zoro chopping off my arm, and then chopping every finger off my hand until Wado Ichimonji was free had just been _creepy_ to view. He'd been polite enough to let me retrieve the limb and all of its pieces, but afterwards…

Yikes. Just… yikes.

I'd only had my Haki to defend myself once the two-hour mark came and went, and with it went a lot of my body. Zoro carved me up like someone with OCD would carve a turkey. I was getting better with my reaction times; I was getting out of the way of some attacks, but when it all came down to it, I just didn't have the physical needs for keeping up with him.

That was only after two hours had come and gone. Even as the third approached, Zoro wasn't slowing down on me. If anything, he only kept getting _faster_. Something which I _couldn't do_.

At some point, I'd zoned out. It became routine after being stabbed the two thousandth, six hundredth and seventy-third time to continue whatever dance we'd started. Most of my strategies were coming up as 'throw sand in his eyes and bite his jugular'. I only ever came back to what I was doing when something exceptional given the circumstances happened.

Such as now.

Zoro swung all three swords together, his neck moving along with his arm in a way that left me confused over how he managed not to snap it. There was no jumping away from this one, which left me nothing to do but block as best I could and get ready to scavenge whatever came off out of the sand.

Clunk. Clang. Clunk.

I don't know who was more surprised when my finger managed to intercept and stop all three swords, me or Zoro. We kind of just stared at each other for a moment, neither one of us moving, until he jerked forward and I instinctually pushed back.

Trying to out-muscle Roronoa Zoro, I soon found out, was like trying to play a guitar without taking it out of its case first. What are you doing, you're stupid, go home and think about your life before you show yourself in public again, you useless embarrassment. I don't even know why I tried.

I would need some way to multiply myself beyond human capabilities if I wanted any chance in that scenario. Kind of like that protagonist from that anime-

An idea hit me like Zoro had hit me half an hour ago, when he tripped over a rock and I kicked his dropped swords into the ocean while giving him the finger. I laughed; a shrill squeak because I didn't even have enough air to form words, and would have smacked myself in the face if I wasn't currently playing a game of keep-away with three swords and my jugular.

Of course, anime! Why hadn't I thought of this earlier!?

I clenched my free hand into a fist, actually feeling the muscles in my arm bunch together. They were already responding, telling me this would work, that I was a fool to wait this long. Bone? Who gave a shit about bone? It would all come back eventually! There was just one thing missing, though…

Oh. Duh.

I was in a shounen world, wasn't I?

The swords, which had been inching towards me, were stopped dead in their tracks. Zoro grunted, only once, his eyes narrowing even further as he stared up at me. My arm, which had reached the level of _shaking_ in its attempt to match my crew's Swordsman, went completely still.

I looked down at him, and smiled. I was just… so gosh darn happy for this opportunity, you know?

"Percentiles." Don't bother asking why saying the name of an attack actually makes it work. What I was doing was basically plagiarism anyway, so I don't really care. "One Hundred."

I'll skip the lesson on biology, because you either don't care, or do care, and know far more than I could ever tell you anyway. All you need to know: I knew, from close to a full year of regularly working out, that muscles were tricky things at the best of times. I also knew from getting curious and spending hours on the internet researching, that trying to use more muscle than your body readily gave you access to, without some serious work beforehand, was a Bad Idea.

So, for me and my meat-puppet of a body, this would have either worked splendidly or made me look like an idiot while simultaneously cutting off the only physical avenue for the future that I could possibly think of.

It only took me close to three hours of close-quarters combat with a ticked off Pirate Hunter.

The idea was simple enough. What I was getting from my muscles wasn't enough, so I would just take more. It was a staple from a series that featured a living zombie in the main character role… I wonder if he would have minded me taking it?

Anyway, not important.

Zoro, as I was quickly discovering, could make some of the funniest faces. I would have to start up a notebook if I wanted to keep on top of all of them. When I pushed his swords down with my index finger, he looked mainly confused and also a little constipated. When I stepped forward and punched him in the stomach with everything my arm could give me and more, I couldn't even see the expression he'd settled on, partly because of the blood that flew from his mouth and splattered over my eyes and partly because of the fact that he was flying through a tree some thirty metres away from where I was standing.

I wiped the blood off my face hastily, cringing at the feeling of it all over my skin, and glanced down at the hand I'd punched Zoro with. To put it simply, I'd completely fucked it up.

Bones were poking out _everywhere_. My fingers were pretty much compressed into my palm. All the way up my arm, odd bulges beneath my akin told me exactly where I'd dislodged bones and outright broken them in some cases, and I think my shoulder may have been somewhat dislocated.

Did it count as dislocated if it was lodged in the side of my neck? I'm going to go with… _yes_.

It looked like it should have hurt. Thank all the small miracles in the universe, it didn't.

Either way, as gruesome as it looked, everything was healing. It was healing slowly, though; at a far more sluggish pace than what I was used to. Maybe larger injuries took longer to stitch together?

I shook my head to chase away that train of thought, vowing to test it out later as I yanked my shoulder out of my ear (and got blood all over my jacket, ew) and turned back to the ship. I had my doubts that Zoro had been taken out with that single hit, but honestly, I was tired. Not physically, but I think hours upon hours out in the sun may have fried some circuits. Hence why I was retreating to what would hopefully turn out to be neutral ground for the time-

"Shishishishi!"

 _Motherfucker_.

I stepped to the side, allowing Luffy's fist to sail harmlessly past my ear. It hit a rock, which coincidentally chose that moment to stop being a rock and start being dust, and I had to take another step to the side as Luffy reeled himself in and skidded along the beach. He was hunched over, the grin on his face only getting wider when I turned back around and gave him the blankest stare I could muster.

"Shishishishi! My turn!"

Zoro chose that moment to stumble out from behind a tree, a disturbing glint in his eye as his head slowly twitched around to face me. He was smiling.

I think he also licked his lips and mouthed something, but I was cringing so hard at the implications that I didn't see it.

Say, did you know that you _can_ Tango with three people?

One of those people just had to be the one who was getting stepped all over.

And wouldn't you know it, I suck at dancing.

 **XxX**

Seven hours. _Seven hours of nonstop-_

Oh, wait, my apologies, I'm exaggerating.

 _Six hours and fifty-five minutes of nonstop fighting_ later, I stumbled into the Going Merry's kitchen, one leg broken and the other only being held in place by the muscles tangled around it. Luffy and Zoro were both conked out on the deck, where I'd dragged and subsequently dropped them after they finally stopped beating the ever-loving shit out of me.

I'd gotten a few good hits in. Luffy's face was basically one big bruise, as he didn't really seem to make a habit of guarding it, and Zoro probably had at least a cracked rib that he wasn't letting anybody know about. I hadn't even won the fight; Zoro called it quits because his swords were starting to get dull and Luffy just fell asleep a few minutes after that.

Nami, Usopp, Johnny and Yosaku were all gathered around the table as I crashed through the threshold, enjoying what I could only assume were midnight snacks. Night had risen while I was busy on the sandbank, not that I would have been able to give you a precise time. Unfortunately, I'd been a bit busy at the time.

The four of them looked over at me when I entered. Johnny and Yosaku looked pitying, Usopp's face was bizarrely blank, and Nami's jaw was set to twitching every few seconds as they all took in what condition I was in. Everything was still connected, some bits just… weren't on straight.

Entirely bypassing the bowl they'd set in the centre of the table, I shuffled past them all, snatching Yosaku's cigarette out of his hand before he could light it with one of the candles surrounding them. Stuffing it into my mouth, I flicked the stovetop on and lit my new acquisition like the bogan I was.

Straightening up, I took a deep breath – and prompted fell backwards with a resounding thud, puffing out a lungful of smoke as I went.

The ceiling sure was pretty in here.

The one flickering candle that I could see cast a long shadow across my face. I squinted up into the darkness, spotting the nose before noticing the face that was attached to it.

"You have fun?" I think Usopp was trying for sarcasm. I raised a hand, planning to flip him off, before the light caught something golden on his chest that made me stop in my tracks.

"…Are you wearing a cross?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Usopp's tone hadn't changed one bit. He quickly pulled his head back behind the table, but not before I saw the waterfall of sweat making its way down his brow.

…Alrighty then.

My knees wobbled as I pushed myself back to my feet. They didn't feel weak so much as not there whatsoever, which was a far more legitimate concern for me now than it had been a day ago. I don't even know why I spent valuable momentum coming to the kitchen, my first impulse after moving around for so long had just been to get something to drink.

"So how long until we reach the Baratie, Big Sis?" I didn't stop when I heard Johnny's voice, mainly because I was under the impression that I wasn't Big Sis. I closed the door behind me before I could hear Nami's answer, stepping over Zoro's insensate form and swinging one leg around the rigging. Soon enough, I was as high as I could climb, the cigarette clamped between my teeth the only light around for as far as I could see.

I remained there the entire night, watching for any other ships and thinking back on all I had learned today.


	6. Food For Thought

**A/N:** This chapter was an absolute nightmare to produce. Violent illnesses, computer crashes... it was awful.

But it's here now, so I hope you enjoy!

* * *

"For the record, while I do not doubt that this is a fine idea, I question the choice to string me up and throw me overboard."

Usopp paid no mind to my whining as he flitted around my waist, fastening clips and wrapping cords around all sorts of places. Nami watched on with a pinched expression on her face, her arms crossed and her body language anything but happy.

 _"_ _You made us lose half a day of travel time, you make up for it,"_ she'd huffed as she poked a finger in my face, and then proceeded to find and bully Usopp into complying with her plan, _"unlike you, some of us have places we need to be."_

"Some of us have places we need to be," I warbled under my breath in a mocking falsetto. Usopp just hummed, flipping a switch to the sound of what could have been a decompressing airlock as he stepped back. I rolled my eyes at him, he shrugged at me, and I finally took the opportunity to look down at myself as he made his way towards the kitchen.

I'd abandoned my jacket for the moment, wrapping it around Luffy's skinny shoulders and telling him in no uncertain terms to stay the fuck away from the Fruit in the front pocket if he wanted to survive long enough to be Pirate King. I knew the exact moment he understood what I was saying, which corresponded to the nod and small grin he gave me.

He then proceeded to ruin that image he'd just constructed by flipping the hood up and having it swallow his entire head, but I figured I could trust him on this; even if only to keep my Devil Fruit out of a certain thief's hands. My bow had gone to Usopp along with all but two of my arrows; I'd given him the go-ahead to play around with it while I carried out Nami's orders.

My shirt and jeans were folded up neatly atop what would have been my hammock if I slept. The men's quarters weren't anything special, even for my first expedition into it, but I would definitely look into getting some perfume or flowers or _something_ to cover up the smell. If I had been going through a slump back home I could forget to shower for weeks on end; pirates apparently didn't even need that excuse.

With all the preparations done and the ropes tied around the mast, I offered Nami a sarcastic salute that I hoped didn't come across as genuine, dragging myself and my harness up the front of the ship so I was standing beside Luffy and his special seat. Then, with all the grace of a bound hostage that had just been poked out onto the plank with a cutlass, I kicked off my shoes and socks and flopped over the edge of the ship.

The water, once I hit it, was frustratingly cold. I made sure to let everyone know with a slew of strongly-worded, yet creative adjectives.

"MOTHER FUCKER, THIS WATER IS EXTREMELY FUCKING COLD!"

I think I saw a whip out the corner of my eye. So, still grumbling for all to hear, I paddled out until the ropes offered some resistance, and we were off.

I'd never been a particularly strong swimmer. Thankfully, what I had to do was less swimming and more just punching the water around me into submission, so I got along fine. I went from fifty to seventy-five to one hundred percent gradually, not trusting myself to not tear Merry's mast right out of the deck, though I eventually had to calm down when I started rising _out_ of the water.

Hmm, travel above water, now that was worth checking out later.

The morning passed by slowly. I didn't have all that much to do except pull the ship along the waves and contemplate whether it would be worth it to transfer one of the ropes to my neck, but finally, something popped up over the horizon. I didn't even see it at first, too busy smashing through the water with my forehead, and it took Usopp shooting me with my own bow and arrow for me to realise that it was finally time for me to stop pulling.

We were drifting at a considerable pace as I got dressed and stubbornly refused to help in the efforts to slow us down. That refusal was soon enough revoked when Luffy and Zoro somehow managed to get the anchor overboard without a chain attached to the other end, and someone had to retrieve it.

I didn't even bother taking off my shoes before I leapt back in. Three minutes and a liberal application of one hundred percent of a human's peddling power brought me back to the surface with an anchor draped over my shoulder, and another thirty seconds of scrambling up moist wood had me flopping down on the deck with what were probably multiple hairline fractures all over my legs.

It was at that point that I, along with everybody else on board the Going Merry, noticed the Marine flag that was emerging from around the corner of the restaurant.

Well, taking into account the Jolly Roger that someone had raised while I had been in the water that morning, this could only be considered some pretty shit timing.

Somehow, that didn't surprise me.

 **XxX**

"I've never seen that Jolly Roger before."

I busied myself with dragging the anchor across the deck, gradually managing to move faster as my legs stitched themselves back together. Everyone else was lined up along the railing facing the Marine ship as I disappeared into the storeroom, and most of them were still there when I stumbled out with the longest cut of rope that I'd been able to find.

A quick survey of the ship told me that Johnny and Yosaku were nowhere to be seen. It wasn't really anything to be worried about, they'd probably just gone on ahead to reserve a table or something. I had my doubts that they'd want to be seen on a pirate ship by the Marines, especially if they weren't looking for a bounty. Armed with the knowledge that I wouldn't be needed or need to go into the restaurant, I plopped down onto the deck, crossed my legs, and began working on our anchor.

The knot I had been going for was simple enough; it would use the anchor's own weight to tighten the ropes and use two different threads to lighten the load each would have to heft. Unsurprisingly, something went wrong, which sapped a few more minutes from my day while I did my best to fix my mistake. Eventually, I decided that what I had was passable, and dragged the anchor to a corner where it would be out of the way until Usopp could properly fix the pulley that somebody had somehow managed to break.

The Marine ship had just pulled away when I made my way over to the railing and tapped Luffy on the shoulder. He was still wearing my jacket, and I'm surprised that it didn't manage to entirely swallow him. He wasn't even that small; just obviously not built for the types of clothes that I liked to wear.

"Hey guys, what's going-OOMPH!"

The air that I had been using to speak was forced out of my lungs as something heavy slammed into my chest. My momentum reversed, and where once I had been walking towards the railing and the rest of the ship occupants, I was now flying backwards, narrowly missing the mast and hitting the ground in a roll.

My arms were curled, instinctively going around whatever had hit me. As I gingerly unwound from my attacker, I clawed at the railing on the opposite side of the ship, popping the cannonball out of the divot it had just carved into my chest and into my waiting hand.

There was a fist engraved on it, with stylised bolts in place of the knuckles. I stared at it for a minute, before slowly raising my head and seeking out the gaze of the man who must have ordered the cannon be fired in the first place. Instantly, I found a connection.

The type of connection where _this motherfucker just shot me with a cannonball_. That's not on.

I made sure I was looking him in the eyes. He was starting to get a bit nervous, I think; I'm pretty sure I could make out some sweat on his brow. I took a step forward, and even though he was on an entirely different ship, he took an equal step back. It was most gratifying to see, especially when he cracked and began to bark orders at the other sailors on deck.

A small part of my mind was telling me that this wasn't the best idea, considering I was juggling a cannonball and giving a group of Marines the stink-eye. The much larger part of my mind was telling me in opposition; pirate.

I stepped up to the plate, which was just the railing in this instance. The Marine ship's cannon was trained on us again, and I could feel everybody's gaze on the back of my head.

"One hundred percent."

The fuse was lit. I cocked my arm back. More than one person on the other ship cried out, though that may have had something to do with the fact that I was cackling maniacally and holding a cannonball that I had just caught over my head. Before their cannon could get even halfway to firing, I let loose the ball in my grasp, stumbling forward a little at the force I'd just exerted and spraying Merry's deck with some leftover sea water from my clothing.

I hadn't been aiming for anything other than ship. As such, when the cannonball impacted against the hull only a meter of so above the water, I hadn't been expecting it to lurch quite so much. The front of the ship even lifted out of the water a little bit, before tipping sideways and swirling in the suddenly hectic waters. Grumbling under my breath, I shook my arm out, accepting my jacket as Luffy held it out to me and running a hand through my flattened hair.

"Who-"

 ** _BANG!_**

I whirled around, my hand straying to my bow as if it would be of any help to me in this situation. It took my eyes a moment to catch up to me, and by the time they did, the cannonball was already puncturing through the front doors of the _Baratie_. There were some crashes, a muffled explosion, and then silence for a second before a massive toque blanche and the person attached to it slammed through what was left of the doors.

There was a cannonball in his grasp. As inconspicuously as I could, I took a step in front of the Merry's cannon, my shoulder bumping into Usopp's when he apparently had the exact same idea.

The chef then proceeded to kick the cannonball over the horizon with his peg-leg, spit into the ocean, grimace at something or another, and then stomp back through the doors. He paid us and the Marines absolutely no attention; considering Red Leg Zeff could probably literally kick all of our asses into the deepest trench in the ocean using nothing but his stupid hat, I couldn't help but feel somewhat relieved by that.

The vice grip I'd had around my bow relaxed at the very distant explosion. I huffed out a little laugh as I turned to the rest of the crew, taking in the unamused expression everyone who wasn't named Luffy or Zoro was wearing.

"Technically," I held up a finger before anybody could get a word in edgewise, "that was self-defence."

"That was a Marine Lieutenant!" Johnny, who for some reason had a bloodied nose and a few missing teeth, spluttered indignantly. Yosaku nodded along beside him, his own face messed up and one arm sticking out at what may have been an unnatural angle.

I shot a glance over my shoulder at the rapidly sinking vessel, and then turned back and snatched the cigarette from between Yosaku's lips. He tried to swipe it back as I took a puff, using his injured arm, which only ended with the limb twitching uncontrollably.

I just shrugged at him and, by extension, the rest of the crew. Luffy snickered as he passed me and leapt off the side of the boat, and I saluted everyone with my cigarette as I followed after him. Landing beside him, I bent my knees to absorb the impact and very nearly managed to fall off the pier, only staying on my feet due to what I could only suspect was a miracle.

I glanced at Luffy as grumbling arose from Merry's deck, catching his gaze and rolling my eyes. His grin picked up at one end as he snorted, linking his hands behind his head and turning back to the Baratie. We walked along in silence, eyeing the building that housed the next person to join the crew.

Oddly enough, it wasn't awkward in the slightest. If anything, I felt more comfortable during that short walk than I had at any other point since I'd arrived in this world. That was something I'd noticed from afar, usually from atop the rigging; there was no such thing as awkwardness in Luffy's life. No matter who he was talking to or where he was, he just seemed to abolish the very concept from his surroundings.

Even while conversing with Johnny and Yosaku, who were still giving me the cold shoulder mind you, he was the picture of composure. In the face of someone who had boarded his ship, with the intent to harm and a weapon in their hand, he'd earned himself their friendship in the amount of time it would have taken me to make a cup of coffee. And not even a quality cup either, I was talking the shitty instant variety.

It boggled my mind something fierce, the knowledge that there were people out there with the social aptitude for something like that. Even for all his less than impressive appearance, I respected Luffy immensely for his skills, but that didn't mean I had been expecting the silence that I much preferred while in his presence. If anything, I had been making plans to pull off an ear and hand it over to him while simultaneously hoping having it separated from my body entirely would impede its ability to hear shit.

As Luffy swung the front doors of the Baratie open and marched in, I clamped my teeth around my cigarette and followed along. The rest of the crew were still disembarking when I threw a glance over my shoulder, so I just shrugged to myself and meandered over to the table that Luffy had claimed, rather than hold the door open for them like the gentleman I very clearly and obviously was and am.

The inside of the Baratie… do I even need to go into detail about its appearance? It was a restaurant. It was clean and had some tables and shit lying around. In all honesty, considering just what the place represented and who was in charge, the inside of the place was pretty lacklustre in regards to what I would have expected. There was way too much white and blue, I presume to remind people that it was a seafaring restaurant. As if the idiots spilling their food down their fronts with each passing wave didn't make that apparent enough.

Really, it was kind of lame.

Until Popeye came around to take our order.

Seriously, those things weren't forearms. They looked more like fucking _tumours_.

"Welcome, you squid-faced bastards!" I couldn't not flinch away when the Sailor Man tipped down to our level like a falling tree, the smile on his face easily more concerning than his proximity. He looked like someone had just kicked him in the balls and he was now attempting to not scream in pain.

"Hello!" Luffy returned cheerfully. My response was to snatch up one of the menus lying on the table and use it to hide my face, while also holding back my tears as I read about all the things I wouldn't be able to enjoy.

The chair beside me scraped outwards. I caught sight of Usopp's expansive hair for a moment before inching the menu closer to my eyes. In my defence, ordering food in a restaurant even when the waiter looks _remotely_ human was scary enough. The last thing I needed was to slip up and ask where Olive Oil was, especially if that was a reference that people would get.

Conversation at the table was stilted at best. I wasn't taking part in any way, even though the initial unjustified eatery panic had dwindled and I'd relinquished my menu. I probably wouldn't have brought very much to the table (hah!) in terms of topics anyway; restaurants make me feel… weird. Sweaty, panicky, anxious, I don't know how to explain it.

The anxieties that couldn't be explained with conventional logic were always the most difficult to get around. 'What is it about having to order food that makes you feel off?' 'I don't know.' Where are you supposed to go from something like that? Trying to find your way around a problem like that was like trying to find your way out of a maze after being dropped right smack dab in the middle of it. Except the maze was also the maze that one guy built to keep the minotaur contained in that one story, the maze that didn't have any way out.

I don't know why I used to love that story. My father would threaten me with the maze if I didn't behave. I ended up not behaving because I wanted to meet the cow-man. I was always under the impression that I would be able to eat him before he ate me. I was an unhealthy child.

What the fuck was I talking about?

Oh, right, the restaurant.

Soon enough, our waiter walked out of his comic strip and back into my life, this time in possession of a pen and notepad. Most of the room was looking at us by that point regardless, but little did they all know the show that would be soon to follow.

Patty, as he finally introduced himself, certainly didn't. I could tell because when I wasn't busy looking up at the ceiling and questioning why I'd entered this building in the first place, I was watching his seriously weird face like a hawk.

It was utter pandemonium. Luffy started listing dishes, and only got louder with every protest that we _literally_ didn't have enough liquid capital to cover his desired expenses. Zoro, the irritating bastard, neglected to listen to anyone who dared tell him that alcohol wasn't an entrée or main course. For whatever reason, Nami was under the impression that she could haggle with our waiter, and that snowballed into an hour long shitstorm that only ended with a peg-leg and its many uses in conjunction with a human skull.

I still don't know why _I_ was targeted, but whatever. I did end up taking the hit for Usopp, who was the only other person at the table who seemed to have even a smidgeon of a clue how to behave; by which I mean he was mostly silent and spent most of his time watching the exchange happening like it was some sort of intense match of table tennis. The kick didn't hurt anything other than my sensibilities anyway, so fuck it, I guess.

Johnny and Yosaku took half an hour to get their orders down, because somebody would always talk over them whenever they opened their mouths. Usopp only got his turn because he snatched the notepad and pen out of Patty's hands, wrote what he wanted down, and shoved them back towards our waiter. At one point, I left the table and had a bit of a wander around the boat, but I didn't find anything too interesting except the sight of a sinking Marine ship, so I returned to the table and slipped back into my seat without anyone noticing.

Beyond that, I couldn't hope to tell you anything interesting about the experience. I could only be happy that once we had Sanji on board, there would never be a reason for anybody to order food ever again. There was that minute where some pink-haired dipshit in a Marine uniform tried to walk up to our table and… arrest us, I think? He kind of choked on his own tongue when he saw me, at which point Luffy Jet Pistoled him back through the doors and his date wisely chose to just take a seat and order herself some lunch. That may be the first sensible thing anybody had done in my presence since I got here.

Finally, after the hour and a half marker had come and gone and Patty had returned from his trip to the bathroom, I can only assume that one of the other cooks took pity on Patty and sacrificed a virgin goat in the kitchen. The notepad was filled out, the orders had been catalogued, and Patty was staring towards the kitchen with a look in his eye that suggested he would be downing the first thing he could get out of the janitor's closet.

Then he noticed me, and I got to see the exact moment the last of Patty shattered and morphed him into an empty husk of his former glory.

With great trepidation, he flicked to a new page on his notepad, and just looked at me. I guess that, because I was sitting between Zoro and Usopp, both of whom were easily the quietest at the table after me, he'd just completely missed my existence.

Shame it couldn't remain that way.

"Nothing for me, thanks."

A lot of interesting things happened to Patty's face in that moment. He went from relieved to insulted, and then back to relieved, before finally settling on an indignant glare.

"You came to a restaurant like ours and you're not going to have anything to eat?" Some of the people who were no longer watching the antics of our table turned back around at Patty's volume. I groaned and sank into my chair, rolling my eyes as Usopp oh so helpfully opened a menu and shoved it under my nose.

"Fine. You guys have any brains lying around?" Patty actually began to write that down before jolting upright. I grinned up at him, showing very little mirth and very many canine teeth. "I'm a zombie, you see."

A few of the people around us chuckled. That number didn't extend to cover anybody who was actually important to the story, so they weren't really worth the effort it would take to delve into their reactions.

Patty was looking at me directly in the eye now, his mouth set in a _very_ thin line. I maintained my guileless smile, and only allowed it to drop once our waiter had slowly inscribed something in his notebook and left our table without a further word.

For some reason, I was getting the distinct impression that somebody was going to have their food spat in.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to ponder that further, as in that moment the front doors of the Baratie slammed open to admit a man that was becoming very familiar to me, what with the pink hair and all.

The Marine, whose name I still did not know, stood in the doorway within a very nearly visible aura of anger. His shoulders heaved as he seethed, his bloodshot eyes scanning over the entire restaurant before they came to settle on our table.

Or, more specifically, on my seat.

It came to my attention, as I sat there and stared at this man, that I most definitely threw a cannonball at him earlier. Technically, I had only been giving it back, but given that Strawberry Shortcake looked ready to stab a bitch, I didn't feel that the odds of him listening were very high.

So I just gave him the same smile that I gave Patty, and imagined myself taking a step over a cliff-face as Shanks' cousin who obviously hadn't been removed enough times twitched so violently that he lost his footing.

The way he clawed his way through the restaurant and over to our table made it look like he had a bit of a grudge. Soon enough, he got close enough for the table to obscure my view of him, though that changed when a quivering, metal-encrusted hand slammed down on table surface and pulled up with it a very dishevelled blossoming rose bush.

He swayed there for a bit, heaved a breath, and finally managed to focus his eyes on my face. My smile faltered slightly in the face of his **_KILLDEATHMAIMDESTROY_** anger, but only slightly.

"I, Marine Lieutenant Fullbody-" Poor man. It looked like he'd been hit by a cannonball and then a ballistic fist from a ballistic Captain, so of course I had to go and make things worse for him.

"Hello, Marine Lieutenant Fullbody!" All of my cheer was false. It was also piled on thick, high, and obnoxious. "My name is Lucas. They," I gestured to the first two men on Fullbody's left, both of whom had been glaring at the man with surprising intensity, "are Chimney and Stupid, respectively. We believe their parents may have hated them, which judging from your appearance, is something the three of you will find no issue in bonding over."

I don't know why any other tables were trying to hold conversations when mine kept rudely interrupting them. Through the new silence, I could have sworn I heard someone click their fingers and mutter, 'snap.'

When I turned back to Fullbody, I found him doing a cosplay of this weird Beanie Baby my little sister used to have when she was younger. It had a purple face, pink hair, and it always used to give me nightmares. I say _used to_ because that was the first time I'd ever burned something on purpose.

Fullbody twitched again. He looked like he was about a third of the way through a piece of Wonka's Three Course Dinner Chewing Gum."I bet you think you're real funny."

Shouldn't have shot a cannonball at me, fuckwit.

"Well, no. If I was trying to be funny, I would have told you something other than the truth."

The fun thing about emotive people is that when they snap, it was on full display for all to see. Being faced with a stone wall who would just go home and cry while no one was looking wasn't entertaining, that was sad. But when someone could stand in front of the entire world and rage like nobody was looking… that was the stuff.

I don't think I'd come across a person in this world yet, either personally or through a computer screen, who wasn't either emotive or lying to themselves. Fullbody was no different, even if he was depressingly easy to rile up. Damn early minor antagonists, either overstaying their welcomes or never getting enough of the limelight...

Fullbody didn't scream, or cry, or even groan. What left his mouth was something I could only describe as a gurgle, as his bones straightened out and his muscles tensed even further. He lunged forward, _onto_ the table, and almost had his hands around my neck before an anchor in the form of an arm clasped around the collar of his shirt and he was lifted right off his stomach.

"Hello, you waste of space!" Patty practically sang, Fullbody in one hand and a silver tray in the other. Fullbody flopped around like a hooked fish, but it was obvious that there was just nothing left in his tank. He could never hope to combat the chef's surgically implanted wrecking balls.

"I'll be with you in a moment, please be patient." Fullbody didn't protest when Patty draped him over his shoulder. He did find enough time to give me the evil eye, however, so he couldn't have been feeling too out of it.

Out of nowhere, the silver tray landed on the table in front of me. I'm not too proud to admit that I jumped at the suddenness of its arrival, and then jumped once more when Patty got so close to my face that I could see his wrinkles.

And then the momentum carried Fullbody's butt into my forehead, but we don't speak of that. Ever.

"You're in luck, sir. We just so happened to have some left-over Sea King meat from the breakfast rush." If I had any blood left in my body, it probably would have gotten right the fuck out of my face right then and there. As it was, I was already pale enough for the effect to carry, and carry it did.

Patty grasped the lid before I could stop him. In a grand gesture, he pulled it away, and I very nearly lost the will to live.

Wanna know something interesting about Sea Kings? Apparently, their brains are orange. Oh, and they reek to high Heaven and back, judging by everyone else's reaction to it. It wasn't actually registering for me, which was absolutely fine as far as I was concerned.

Watching Luffy's arm snap back into position hard enough to knock him off balance almost made it worth the fact that I had to know this existed.

"-So, I hope you do enjoy your meal," Patty concluded, and I realised with a start that he'd been giving me a rundown of this dish the entire time. He bowed low to the ground, though he did keep Fullbody out of further danger, and then stepped back.

He didn't leave, though. No, he stuck around, and he was grinning at me like an asshole as I stared up at him in absolute wonder. Wondering if he was actually serious, and what the fuck his problem was, mainly, but still wonder.

Patty was grinning. He looked very proud of himself. I caught his eye, glanced down at the dish in front of me (which had been thrown together in, what, a minute?), and raised a single eyebrow.

Patty's grin widened. It was like looking in a mirror from five minutes ago. "It's alright if you don't want to eat it, I can always take it back and have our Sous Chef prepare something else for you…"

Sous Chef. Sanji. My head snapped back down to the brains in front of me, before I swept my gaze over everyone else at the table. Most of them looked disturbed, Usopp was holding a hand to his stomach and another to his mouth as his cheeks bulged, but it was Zoro's reaction that resonated with me the most.

He was simply staring at me, one eyebrow elevated ever so slightly. He looked like he was about to ask me if I was going to eat that.

I looked back down at my plate. For a pile of brains that had been thrown together to spite me, the presentation was magnificent…

In the silence of the restaurant, I made up my mind.

Glancing up, I caught Patty's eye, and held it.

It widened as I reached for my fork, stabbed a piece of my meal, and shoved it in my mouth.

 **XxX**

 _Omake ~ Valentine's_

 _Written by: EXNativo_

"Valentine's? I joined the crew a couple of days before _Valentine's?_ "

The waters outside the Baratie weren't at all entertaining. Many of the ships docked there were civilian, and any that were Marine usually thought twice about starting something whenever I pointed my bow at their Captain's forehead. We'd only been here a couple of hours, but already it wasn't looking like Luffy was having any luck in getting our chef to join us.

It would be nice to have Sanji on the ship with us. Not having to worry about the others starving to death while out on the ocean would help to ease my conscious, especially when I didn't have the slightest clue of how to keep them fed. Even so, I wasn't going to help bring him on board; that wasn't my place, nor my prerogative.

Luffy was Captain; getting people to join was his duty.

Not to mention, I wasn't planning on ever setting foot in the Baratie. Even all the way out on the ship, I could hear the compliments the food was getting. Knowing I wasn't able to taste it was bad enough; there was every possibility that I would burst into tears if I actually _saw_ any of it.

Anyway…

"Yeah," was all Usopp said back. The rest of the crew were still eating their breakfast in the restaurant, or I assume they were. Judging by the crumbs around Usopp's mouth, he'd finished his meal before coming out here. He'd barely said anything to me when he arrived, instead grabbing some paper, a pencil, and an empty bottle, and then settling down on the deck to write something.

A moment later, he was setting the pencil to the side, scanning over the paper carefully before nodding to himself and curling it up. He stuffed it in the bottle in the same movement as he climbed to his feet, stuffing the cork back into the neck of the bottle and turning to face the ocean.

I think he may have mouthed 'Syrup Village' to himself as he tossed it into the waves. I was at a bad angle for lip reading, while also not having any clue how to lip-read.

My gaze shifted from him, to the bottle he'd thrown. It bobbed in the ocean, twisting around with every wave that washed against it. Occasionally it would sink below the waves, but it would always reappear after a moment. Under our eyes, it slowly drifted back the way we had come.

Soon enough, the bottle was gone, and I turned to ask Usopp a question.

"Do we have some spare paper and another bottle?"

 **XxX**

It had taken me the rest of the morning to write my note.

The rest of the crew came and went. I could feel their gazes on me whenever I tore up another piece of paper, sometimes due to a spelling mistake and sometimes due to me being unhappy with what I'd written. A few times the page would get wet whenever I wasn't looking; it took me a while to realise that it wasn't the waves doing it.

Finally, when the sun was as high as it would get, I finished my note. Curling it up carefully, I slipped it into the bottle and shoved the cork back in, climbing unsteadily to my feet. Zoro cracked one eye open from where he was napping on the deck, and Usopp sent me a concerned glance from the kitchen door, but neither of them said anything.

I stepped up to the railing. The water lapped against Merry's hull as I stood there, simply watching it.

After a minute, I dropped the bottle, and headed for the rigging. I didn't look back, didn't bother watching it as it drifted out of sight, because for however long I existed, I would never forget the two sentences that I had written.

 _Dad, Tess, Brooke, I'm so sorry._

 _I miss you._


	7. Working Class Corpse

"Pardon me, waiter? There seems to be a bug in my meal."

I didn't bother looking up from my plate, my jaw moving in a methodical pattern. Chew thirteen times, swallow, fill up fork, ignore the pain of not knowing what I was eating tasted like, rinse, repeat. I had been at it for close to ten minutes; the only thing that had changed in that time was my location, after the smell had gotten to be too much for everyone else at the table.

I'd chosen the far wall to curl up against as I snacked, taking my plate with me on a short tango across the restaurant. Fullbody's lips had lifted into a more impressive snarl than I'd ever seen from any rabid dog as I marched past him, and I may or may not have spilled some of my meal into his lap as a result.

His enraged squawks were music to my ears, especially now that he'd rejoined his date and was trying to return some buoyancy to the sinking disaster that was his day out.

Really, he'd come to a famous eatery with a loaded battleship and a full staff; either he was shirking his responsibilities, or he was so privileged that he got to have dates while on the clock. So really, anything I did to him, he could take it. Some would argue that he deserved it.

Such were my thoughts while I huddled in the corner, my hood covering my face as I hunched over my food like a sociopath. At least people hadn't been staring until Fullbody decided that he wanted to try saving some face.

Honestly, after the 'mistaking cheap champagne for Château Lafite Rothschild Pauillac Void-Century' fiasco, and the resulting plummet of already lacking sex-appeal he had suffered as a result, I was somewhat amazed Fullbody wasn't consulting an etiquette handbook. Or maybe a fucking deity, just so the option of a miracle was on the table.

Calling more attention to himself was just about the worst way to go about things. For whatever reason, it didn't surprise me that _this_ was where today was going.

Sanji ambled over from the table he'd just served, his cigarette hanging lazily from his lips. I looked on in envy, because whenever I'd tried to do that in the past, I ended up dropping my fucking smoke like an idiot. "Is there a problem?" He drawled in the voice everyone develops when they're stuck in customer service and hated it, slow and deliberate and so obviously condescending that there was no guessing as to where the complainer's opinions could be shoved for all they cared.

I almost reached out to him. _Brother, I know your pain._ I kept my hands to myself, because groping him in public would lead to awkward questions, and I didn't have the money to buy him a drink first, so instead I just pushed myself to my feet and started to hobble over to Fullbody's table.

Sanji glanced up as I approached. Probably because I'd brought my plate of half-eaten brains along. Fullbody's date was next, tearing her eyes away from Sanji for just long enough to sneer at me, much more effectively than Fullbody ever had, at any rate.

Before any of them could say anything, I dipped my hand into Fullbody's soup, some sort of concoction that had been served cold, and pulled the alleged insect out by the wings.

One of the wings tore and I accidentally dropped it back into the soup. I splashed some onto Fullbody's lap as I fished it back out. Life on the edge, no regrets.

I almost snorted through my mouthful of brains once I finally had the bug resting in the palm of my hand. It was a small thing, really, but so unendingly funny; the fly's body was warm.

I don't know if flies tend to have warm or cold blood, and to be quite honest with you, I couldn't really care less if I tried. Do flies even have blood? Fucked if I know. But the fly's body was _warm_. In a _cold_ soup. Now can you see why I'm laughing?

I wondered how long this moron was holding onto it before he spiked his soup.

"May I?" I asked Sanji rather unnecessarily, seeing as I was basically waving the bug in his face. He gestured me forth, and I took a _long_ look at Fullbody's rapidly reddening visage before bringing the fly up to my face.

I then threw it in my mouth, chewed it once, and swallowed. Their expressions would make the violent projectile vomiting I was going to try to subject myself to later totally worth it.

I nodded and muttered absolute nonsense under my breath. "The sky is blue, nice weather we're having today, four times four is sixteen, I'm a little teapot, short and stout…" Smacking my lips, I cleared my throat, and wondered idly if I was a bad person.

...Yeah, probably.

"Ah, it is as I feared." My tone was grave. My quivering lips and the laughter in my voice, not so much. "Sir, if your food is under attack from blowflies before you have even consumed it, then you must be filled with truly _copious_ amounts of crap."

That set off a round of startled laughter. Marines get no respect outside of their jurisdiction. It truly is a shame. Donate today: your body to their ideals and your children to their wars! You, too, can make a difference.

I turned to Fullbody's date. She was one of the few not laughing, which was a shame, because she looked like she would have a nice laugh. "You have my condolences," I told her with utmost sincerity, before turning to Sanji. "May I suggest you direct this man to the furniture of lesser quality, so that once he soils it, you lose less overall?"

A muscle in Sanji's neck jumped as he seamlessly transformed his snort into a polite cough. I lay a hand on Fullbody's shoulder, and squeezed it like I imagine people who are being supported would have their shoulders squeezed. I stopped squeezing at the guttural noise he let out, glancing down at him with a raised eyebrow and a smile that I was only just managing to keep off my lips.

Damn it all if this wasn't fun.

"Excuse me, Sous Chef, I believe I know what the issue with the food is." I tipped the remainder of my plate into Fullbody's soup, splashing the poor man in the face with it. I gave him one final reassuring pat on the shoulder, before scooping up his plate and tipping it back. I probably looked like a pelican trying to swallow a seagull, but I managed to get it all down in the end, lifting up Fullbody's insensate arm and wiping my mouth on his sleeve as I addressed the ever-faithful chef. "You tried giving an ape something from the human menu."

I like to imagine the round of laughter that followed that came straight out of a shitty sitcom. Fullbody, the bloody champion, sat there among the mockery, his eyes shadowed by his bright as fuck hair while I used his own arm to rub circles on his head.

"...I was going to eat that," he muttered, most likely to himself. Really, by this point there were people pointing and laughing. I think somebody out back just spat into the soy latte Fullbody ordered a couple of minutes ago, and his date was sizing Patty up and probably wondering what she would have to do to get him between her buns. The poor radish-looking freak of nature looked like he regretted waking up in the morning.

Did I feel bad?

Maybe in the deepest, darkest recesses of my heart… Nope. Not even there.

"Well, if you're still hungry, why don't you go eat _shit_?"

I saw the swing coming almost as soon as Fullbody began winding up for it. He televised the movement more than the war against vaccines. Even so, I was only just able to lean out of the way, right in time to get myself into position for the hammer-blow that was coming down on top of my skull.

Now, for all my posturing and arrogance, the blow actually managed to knock me onto the deck. I hit the ground so hard that the boat _rocked_ and I bounced slightly, rolling twice before I got my bearings about me enough to realise that I was moving. Throwing out my hands, I pivoted back to my feet in a move that was usually reserved for breakdancing, rotating out of the way and pushing myself into a more controlled roll maybe half a second before Fullbody's fist came down upon where I had been.

I scrambled to get my feet underneath me and rose along with him. There was a small hole where he'd landed, and splinters raining down from the metal bolts on his knuckles. His shoulders were heaving along with his breaths, some of the red on his cheeks seeming to have transferred itself to his eyes.

…Well then, that was new.

"Outside." It wasn't a request or anything as quaint as a demand, that had been an _order_. Fullbody's date was at his shoulder, her lips moving furiously even if her voice was pitched too low for me to hear. She was probably trying to talk him down from his decision, which was interesting. After a moment, he turned to her, giving me a chance to actually look around and see how everyone else was faring.

My entire crew were all halfway out of their seats. Johnny and Yosaku were still seated, though the grips they had on their swords were white-knuckled. All the chefs in the room were looking between Fullbody and I, something like resignation on their faces. The door to the kitchen had cracked open for a moment, Zeff's enormous hat taking up the space before the man who owned it scoffed and returned to his domain.

I used a hand to check over my bow, making sure everything was still in one piece. The Haki coating my finger felt out every tiny notch along the wood, every infinitesimal tear along the vine making up the string. I flicked one of my remaining arrows on the head, bringing forth a shower of tiny sparks. I still hadn't actually figured out how that worked, but it did, so I'd given up on questioning it.

Fullbody turned back to me. The movement caught my eye, interrupting my musings on the act of giving up on musings. The odd colour in his eyes had bled away somewhat, though there was still the slightest… little bit of… zheee…zheeekee…..~

Look, I'm sorry, but there was no reason for that much pink to be on one person's head. As a colour, pink is absolutely fantastic, but there is a time and a place for it.

At this rate, it could be an ambush tactic. Fullbody could get at me while I was still waiting for his transformation sequence to kick off.

"Outside," I agreed in lieu of what I actually wanted to say, which consisted less of words and more of uproarious and very mocking laughter. Fullbody's date, who probably had a name but fuck if I knew what it was, rolled her eyes and scowled at the both of us. My innocent grin in her direction was answered with a raised middle finger.

Fullbody nodded. We stood still for a moment, which was the time it took me to realise that he was waiting on me to go first. To be fair, it was a smart move. I would absolutely sucker punch his brain through his nose if he turned his back on me first.

Had I been looking for a fight? Eh, not exactly. What I was more looking for was an excuse. A fight was good enough, though. More than good enough.

"Well, looks like recess is out." I said to my crew as I passed their table. Most of them looked at least vaguely amused, which was probably more than I could ask for. Zoro in particular was grinning like a shark; he almost certainly knew what I was doing and why I was doing it. Come to think of it, he'd been at the mercy of the Marines unscrupulous morals not very long ago, hadn't he? "See you guys soon, if the teacher asks where I am, tell them that some sakura-lookin' dork wanted me to kick his nuts into the back of his asshole and he wouldn't take no for an answer."

"Move, pirate." Fullbody snapped from somewhere behind me. I retaliated by walking again, at about half the pace I'd been going before I'd stopped. I could hear Fullbody growl – actually _growl_ – from what could have been less than half a metre from behind me, but he still didn't move to overtake me. Odd, I honestly thought he would have been arrogant enough to do so.

At which point I would escort him at high speeds into the wall beside the door.

Next time, Casket. You'll get him next time.

It felt like it took me forever to get to the door. That was because I kept decelerating the closer I got to it. At one point, I even made a full rotation around a table that I was walking past, in complete slow-motion of course. If there was ever a time for you to live without consequences, it may as well be when you're dead.

Finally, once even _I_ was starting to get bored with my antics, I stepped up to the door and pushed it open. I'd been halfway through glancing over my shoulder as I did so, which meant that the only glimpse I caught of the gun there to greet me was out the corner of my eye, a few millimetres before it discharged.

It had been aimed at my chest before I hit the deck, weeks upon weeks of sighting guns and bullets from the edge of my vision pushing me to move. I didn't even think before doing so, so it came to my surprise almost as much as it did Fullbody's that I'd dragged him down with me. The bullet passed over our heads, hitting the back wall of the Baratie and showering splinters down on a shocked man and a woman whom I hoped was his mother and not his date.

The air burst again as the gun was fired a second time. A mental command had my muscles bunching together, the lack of a verbal command leaving me at about sixty when I'd wanted one-hundred, and I flung my hand through the air in an arc, more or less hoping that I would get lucky. My hand was laid out flat, Haki out front, and if Fullbody didn't end up starting a cult for the Straw Hat Pirates and worshipping their luck, I would be shocked. Shocked, and appalled.

The bullet had been aimed at him. Not just at him, but right between his eyes. My finger caught the lower half of it, sending it spinning right into the roof. More splinters rained down, but I was already turned around before I could see them fall, my hand going through the rest of the motion and closing around the barrel of the gun.

"Three hundred percent!" I barked, and squeezed. Metal? Fuck your metal. The entire front half of the gun crumpled inwards like aluminium, much like I could hear my fingers doing from inside their muscle prisons. The hand holding the gun tried to jerk back, but he hadn't let got before I pulled him forward. The gun clattered to the ground as he let go in an attempt to escape and I let go in order to grab his wrist.

The finger covered in Haki was the only survivor on that hand. All the others had been partially or completely crushed under their own force. Still, even curling that one around the man's dangerously skinny wrist was enough, and all his resulting kick did was provide me the leverage I needed to get back to my feet.

"What. The. FUCK!?" I shook Gin's wrist back and forth, drawing a wince from the man that was quickly covered up. I knew who this was; a future member of the Straw Hats in countless stories that I had read. He was skinny as a twig, with bags under his eyes that went deeper than even mine (and wasn't that an accomplishment?). He was also soaking wet, and dressed in a tattered pair of pants and shirt. I could see some splinters poking out of his skin underneath where his clothing had been ruined.

There was also an ominous creaking coming from the bones in my grasp. Briefly, I contemplated letting him go so he could figure his own shit out, because Hell if I knew what his agenda was or where he wanted to go, but the idea I had immediately after that one was infinitely more attractive to me.

Fullbody was still in the ground, so I had to guide Gin around him to ensure safe travel. By which I mean I yanked his arm and almost sent him face first into the doorway, and then subsequently almost knee first into an empty table. "Go to the table with the dumber looking people on it, the one wearing a straw hat will hook you up," I called after him, because I should have been able to go for at least two months before getting sick and tired of being shot at before I'd even introduced myself, and what better punishment was there than Luffy?

Whatever, not my problem. My problem was currently climbing back to his feet, the fury having drained completely from his face, to be replaced with an irritatingly curious stare.

"Let's go to the sandbox, so you won't get too hurt when I push your shit in." I flicked my head in the direction of the door, because I really wanted to punch him and he'd said I could do so when we were outside. Damn it, I shouldn't have fucked around so much on my way here… unless Gin was waiting for someone to open the door for him all that time, and had just been looking to make an entrance?

…I couldn't even fault him on that. If I had a gun and a vengeance, I'd probably do the same thing.

The silence stretched on for another few seconds. It was odd, because when before the silence had been intermingled with idle background chatter and Fullbody's audible huffs of breath, now there was absolutely nothing. I couldn't even hear the ocean from outside, which kind of seemed like a physical impossibility, come to think of it.

"…What is your name, pirate?" He finally asked at length. I didn't bother resisting the urge to roll my eyes, not even to spare his feelings. Absolutely evil, I am.

"Bond." I also didn't hesitate in the least. "James Bond."

Part of me was waiting for the comprehension to appear on their faces, because there was not a person back in my home country who could claim to not know of Fleming's pet spy. Nothing of the sort came forth, though, and I somehow didn't laugh when Fullbody nodded slowly, his features carefully schooled into what I assume was the face he made at his superiors during reports.

"Straw Hat Pirate Bond James Bond," he began, his expression shifting to that of utmost seriousness. I actually felt myself die a little bit on the inside with the knowledge that I probably shouldn't laugh, no matter how much I wanted to. "In acknowledgement of your saving a Marine Lieutenant's life, all transgressions upon said Marine Lieutenant within the last twenty-four hours have been forgiven in the eyes of the law. Furthermore, all members of your crew that are not facing charges of a mortal nature have been granted amnesty from their crimes for the next twenty-four hours. Bounties remain in full effect should any of you turn yourself in during this period of time."

The laughter that had been beating at my rib-cage like a bongo suddenly went quiet. My straining lips fell flat and then open slightly, because how else was I supposed to react to a declaration like that?

"…Uh-" Fullbody turned around, and had the audacity to give me a wave over his shoulder. There was a fair walk from where we were standing to his table, and he easily made it a quarter of the way there before I found my voice again and jerked a thumb towards the doorway, "but I thought we were going outside…?"

Fullbody paused for a moment, his shoulders shaking ever so slightly. He shot a glance over his shoulder, his lips twisted… into a smug smirk? "You should have just let the bullet kill me, Bond," he shrugged, his tone tinged with laughter, his date suddenly a lot more interested in him than she had been before as he shoved Patty to the side and retook his seat.

I couldn't help but stare at him blankly, as he picked up his menu and began to peruse it again. My arm shook slightly, the rest of my fingers slowly uncurling. The good news was that they were all stitched back together properly.

My attention turned back to the table that housed my crew – that title was a bit misleading now, seeing as it was now half my crew and half guests. Gin had settled into the seat I had vacated, glancing all around himself with the paranoia of a man who hadn't been given a meal to eat in far too long. Luffy was actively trying to talk his ear off, which brought a happy smile to my face as I began to make my way back to them.

Brushing off the thanks I was receiving from the other patrons in the restaurant for disarming a rogue gunman was easy enough, mainly because I hadn't done it for them. Seeing where it got me, I was left to wonder why I had done it in the first place. My smile was still in place when I slid into the final available seat at our table – the one directly opposite of Gin, as a matter a fact, and it only widened to include teeth and a slight twitch as I reeled my leg back and kicked him in the shin as hard as I could.

He winced and visibly bit back a curse. The sound coming from underneath the table wasn't all that encouraging. Whoops, too hard.

"I was so close." I began lowly, before he could say anything. He edged back in his seat a bit, and if I wasn't so monumentally pissed off, I would have maybe laughed at the absurdity of the situation. Unfortunately, I was monumentally pissed off, so I would just have to submit that image to memory so I could enjoy it later. "We were at the _door_ , and then _you_ … _ruined_ _ **everything**_."

"Why don't you just-" Usopp began to say. I turned my smile on him, and immediately went about wiping it off my face when the poor boy actually _flinched_ away and damn near toppled out of his seat. Two of the legs left the ground, and it was only the timely and surprisingly competent intervention of Luffy that he didn't end up tasting the floor.

I needed to find a mirror. If I could do that on demand, it would do wonders for my everyday life.

"I needed Fullbody to throw the first punch." Yosaku glanced over my shoulder; the man in question was probably listening in. "I had the upper hand all the way to the end. I was chipping away at him all the way to the door. I wanted him to _shatter_ , because that's when people are at their most entertaining, and he _would_ have. I was so. _Fucking_. **_Close_**."

I stood abruptly, the clattering of my chair hitting the ground just as intrusive as the gunshots earlier. "Casket-" Nami attempted, cutting herself off as I swung a leg up onto the table and made everything atop it jump. With my hand clenched and raised into the air, I painted the perfect picture of some disruptive asshole who was interrupting everyone's pleasant meal with my dramatics.

"Imagine yourself through the eyes of a mighty hawk, looking down upon a scared little bunny rabbit," was as far as I got, before a shiny black shoe caught me in the side of the head and booted me clean through the front doors of the Baratie. Still stuck in my ridiculous position, I slammed feet first into the water, my raised fist the last thing to disappear beneath the waves as I sank like a stone.

You know what, I think this world is racist.

It's because I'm Australian, isn't it?

 **XxX**

You know, humanity and all that comes with it is perhaps the most frustrating thing I've ever come across, in both life and death.

There were probably countless studies, delving into the minds of individuals and groups alike to come to their own conclusions. I was no expert, armed with nothing but my own observations and thoughts, and those had led me in circles and through hoops in every direction imaginable. I'd spent more hours than I could hope to remember debating with myself after reading what was happening in the world around me, puzzling over morality and mortality, belief and inevitability.

After recent events, those discussions had been more or less laid to rest. I tried to not dedicate too much time to that, lest I fell into a pit that sank below the question of where my destiny lay. I'd spent more than enough time there before I'd even hit double digits in age, which had then led me on to several existential crises that eventually escalated to the point of medication. Anti-Depressants at the age of seven, not that they'd really worked or done anything at all.

That could have been the start of it, really, the point in time that I withdrew from the real world and attempted to set up permanent residence within my own mind. That hadn't lasted too long, the human body needs sustenance and other such things to continue to function, but in had been the beginning. It had been my first glimpse into what I assume could have been insanity, and I hadn't turned away from it so much as continued to walk alongside it.

During that time, the library had become my reprieve from the world. Books were my new world, because why should there be such a thing as fiction? Why couldn't everything exist at once, alongside one another upon an infinite shelf of universes? Why could my favourite adventures have to be constrained to some pages and the images my brain generated for me? At what point did understanding; at what point did matter and existence and conscious thought become finite?

School was inconsequential, I'd always felt that it had been. English was simple, Mathematics classes were for the idiots who couldn't count. Science was interesting but ultimately at a scale too small for me to really care, and Art was a monumental waste of my time. Whatever talent I had for the subject wasn't present in any of the lessons we were taught, and so it was neglected until rather recently, purely out of spite.

Eventually, with an impressive array of test scores that meant nothing to me, I moved on to high school, where everything began to fall apart. I blamed and still do blame puberty, at least for starting everything off.

At first, nobody had been attractive. Suddenly, everyone had been attractive, and just as abruptly as the first change had occurred, nobody was all that attractive anymore. There had been those who were pretty, or beautiful, or handsome, or even cute, but there hadn't been anything beyond that point. In between the simple concepts of class, people would pair up and garner everyone's attention, only to fall apart and maybe reconcile later.

It changed as I got older, gradually. More attention, less faith to spread, average amount of contemplation for what it all meant. Talking to people became easier as I learned what they wanted to hear, how to appease their egos or stroke the fires of their compassion. Their archetypes began to fall into place, their attitudes becoming easier and easier to read. Really, a majority of them were alarmingly two-dimensional, at least in their interaction with me. None of it was all that helpful, but the conversations were simple enough to hold no matter how much I wished I wasn't a part of them.

Logically, I knew that at least a couple of them would have thoughts similar to mine in their minds. Whether they manifested as depression or moroseness or helplessness or acceptance was their problem. I shared my thoughts with nobody, as something as personal as that would invite conversation or concern. I hated talking to others, and I hated the knowledge that they were thinking of me even more. Conversation through a computer screen more than sufficed for me.

So, it wasn't out of arrogance or conceit that I would say that I am intelligent, and always have been. That was a simple fact and from my own perceptions, it was correct. If I couldn't trust my own perceptions, then what was I supposed to do, live in despair and paranoia forever? The times I had been actually called arrogant or conceited were few and far in-between, because my reaction to it would always be strong.

I had and still have few things in life that would inspire pride. I was smart. I was attractive. I was a good writer, and I was funny on a good day. That was the end of the list. There were no other achievements, no specialised knowledge and no skills in any one avenue of life that didn't involve pen and paper. For all my dreams of being someone that everyone would hear about, there were only two options that I'd been able to see in my future; fame after death and a long life of thankless toil, or mediocre grunt work in an attempt to upkeep a society that I would like nothing more than to watch collapse, with one or two beers in hand.

The unofficial third option had been killing myself before I even managed to get out of my teen years. I didn't want to think about that even being an option in the first place, but you all probably read the first chapter, so you know how well that went.

Anyway, there was a point to this rant, other than the realisation that I probably should get myself checked for A.D.D. The point was that, even from a young age, I figured that at least one point in my life would be defined by the menial labour that I would have to do to keep my head above the metaphorical water. You should be glad I'm doing my best to censor my thoughts, otherwise we'd never get anywhere.

Either way, now that I was dead, everything changed. Hell, in the event that I survived, I would be completing my dream by proxy, so there was no real need for me to worry about it. I was free to do as I pleased, at least for the time being, which was why I marched myself right into the Baratie's kitchen after climbing out of the water and shaking myself somewhat dry.

"I want a job," I said, right to Zeff's face. Activity in the kitchen _did_ falter, only for a second, but everyone got back to whatever they were doing very quickly as Zeff wiped his hands on a tea towel (or would this world call them dish rags? I don't know). He gave me an assessing look, which I returned with one eyebrow raised and eyes half-lidded.

In my hoodie and jeans, with a weapon slung over my shoulder, a dumb look on my face, and dripping wet, I was the perfect picture of someone who should have found it impossible to be hired.

Meh, Straw Hat Pirate, we do the impossible, blah blah blah.

"I don't need another cook, kid." Zeff grunted dismissively. I pulled my hands out of my pockets, using one to scratch at my chin as the other ran through my still damp hair. His eyes immediately landed on my Haki, narrowing even further than they already had been.

"Good, because I can't cook for shit." And wasn't that the truth. The ban from my kitchen after I accidentally melted a spoon and fried a pot so bad the metal caught fire probably extended to the afterlife. "I'll wait on tables and wash some dishes, maybe pour some drinks. I can sweep the floors after you close up, I don't care. I just need to earn some money for myself while we're here, which shouldn't be all that long."

And there was the crux of the matter. I had absolutely nothing to my name, and eventually I would need to buy something, even if it was only a change of clothes. Say what you will about the Straw Hats, but I would rather kill myself all over again than borrow their clothing. And asking Nami for a loan… that was basically tantamount, so no thank you.

Zeff cleared his throat with the sound of a possessed wood-chipper, slinging the rag over his shoulder and rolling up his sleeves. "You can start as soon as you wash off that gunk from your finger," he told me as he pushed his way to the other end of the kitchen, to begin a vicious assault against what looked to be the beginnings of a bread roll. I took the same path he did, detouring a few metres towards the wall and grabbing an apron.

"Don't insult me, Queen Elizabeth." Zeff didn't bother looking up at me as I slid into position beside him, grabbing hold of two plates and checking the receipt to see which table they belonged to. This wasn't my first rodeo. "We both know you spent enough time on the Grand Line to figure out I'm Armed."

Zeff scoffed, and pointedly turned his back on me. In all honesty, that was the best job interview I'd ever had. Usually employers didn't like a smart mouth that held very little regard for the printed rules.

With two plates in hand and another two balanced halfway up my biceps, I booty-bumped the door open, weaving through the tables to deliver Luffy's next course and the simple soup that Gin had ordered. They all gave me odd looks, but all it took was me imitating the sound a cash register opening for them to understand.

And so, for the next three days, that was my life. Customers came and went, and I was there to take all their orders, alone in my staff duties but for the occasional cook looking for a change of scenery. Sometimes I would see the same person twice or even three times, their wallets always stuffed full. If the person or persons sitting at the table were talkative, I would stay and chat with them. If they were quiet, I'd give them their room. Reading people and giving them what they wanted were key to getting a nice tip out of the deal, after all.

I don't know what the ฿2,200 I was getting every hour translated to in terms of dollars and cents, but I didn't really need to. Combined with the tips I managed to get whenever I smiled at the right person, I was actually making decent headway. It was nice, not having to spent money on anything.

Luffy would complain occasionally, whenever I was on a shift and not able to talk to him, which was pretty much always. I could do nothing but shrug and tell him that even if we were out on the water, I would still be keeping mostly to myself. I wasn't about to leave my comfort zone without a damn good reason, though money was certainly more enticing bait than familial bonding.

True to form, I didn't really speak to any of the cooks either. Sanji, the unlucky fated bastard, had managed to catch Luffy's eye and tended to avoid me out of principle. He'd come around eventually, or he would grow old and die, while feeding his hundreds of cats subpar fish that weren't caught from the All Blue.

…I'd have to save that one to say to his face at some point.

For the most part, it was quiet. Gin left on the first day, followed soon after by Fullbody and his date. The dishes from the day were left to me by the time the dinner rush ended, and I was still doing them two hours after everyone else had gone off to bed. I'd offered, of course, they hadn't just saddled me with all the work.

Once I was done, I'd gone outside and fucked around with my bow and Haki. My first attempts to run on water ended in disaster, so after the first night I decided to shelve the potential miracles and focus on things that would actually be helpful to me. That was my pattern, and I stuck to it while everyone else slept and went about their lives like they would of even had I not been there.

It was, dare I say, boring. Until the dawn of the fourth day, that is.

That was when the big fuck-off boat pulled up alongside the restaurant, and a really big fuck-off guy hobbled off of it.


	8. Getting A Head

"Welcome to the Baratie, home of the Bara-tards."

So many memes and so little time, such was the life of a man who has nothing else to do with his time.

Don Krieg looked like absolute shit. There was no ignoring it, the man actually looked like a gorilla that had died not too long ago. Shadows covered the entirety of his face as he sagged to the ground, even the fur on top of his head that he probably told people was just hair looked defeated.

I just wiped my hands on my apron and stepped forward, taking out my notepad and pencil as I went. I looked down at Gin's pleading expression, then up to Krieg's blank face, and then back down to the notepad in my hands.

"It is against Baratie policy to purchase livestock that is still alive." I drew a square onto my paper as I glanced over it and into Gin's face. "I'm sorry, sir, but you're going to have to take it out back and finish the job if you want to be paid. No exceptions."

With that, I stuffed my hands into my pockets, twisting on my heel to rejoin the efforts of keeping on top of the breakfast rush. I only managed to get three steps away before something slammed into the ground behind me, and I'm not proud to admit I giggled a little bit at the sight of Krieg facedown on the Baratie's floor.

I wouldn't have been able to tell you how much of it was an act at this point, and how much was him genuinely starving to death. Either way, it was funny.

"Please, food…" He rasped into the floor. Gin was by his side in a heartbeat, tears streaming down his cheeks to such a degree that they actually rained down from his face. "I'll even take scraps… anything, I beg you all…"

A lot of noise rose up in the seconds following that declaration. Gin was lamenting how a man such a Don Christ could be brought so low by something as droll as the limitations of his adonis body. One of the cooks - I think he introduced himself to be as Carne a couple of days ago, I wouldn't know, I wasn't actually listening when he started to talk. Anyway, one of the cooks launched into some exposition about how Krieg became a pirate and his prefered methods, as though any of the panicking mass of people didn't already know this shit. There was even a baby crying, which was odd, because I could have sworn there hadn't been any families present with kids young enough to be ordering from the children's menu unironically. They usually showed up later, after the parents actually had the chance to sleep a little.

Throughout the ruckus, I kept my eyes on Krieg's apparently insensate form, watching for anything, really. This was a novel experience for me, because this was one of the only scenes I'd ever actually seen on paper, and it had always set off bells in my head that spoke to me about hidden agendas and how badly it was craving a cheeseburger.

Yes , I know I said to never listen to voices in your head, but… ah, you know what, fuck it. You're not here for life advice.  
Krieg certainly looked the part of knifing at Death's security door with Wado Ichimonji like the bony dickhead owed him money. I think he was drooling on the floor a little bit, which, I mean, come on man. Someone will have to clean that up, and we both know you'll never do it. If you're gonna die, just fucking die. Don't be an inconvenience.

"Gin!" I had to shout, just to make sure I was heard. The noise in the room died down instantly - a typical response whenever I had to shout, really - as everyone whipped around to stare at me. The look on Gin's face was downright pitiful, like a child who had just lost his icecream cone.

"Go talk to Zeff - big hat, looks like he'll fucking kill you." I gestured over my shoulder, utilising some of the little concrete knowledge I had. Gin had claimed to be a paying customer, and it would seem a bit too bizarre if he had to loot his own captain in order to feed him. "Negotiate some food for your crew, I want to speak to your captain, alone."

"B-but he's-!"

"Don't worry, I'll do all the talking." I made no effort to make the smile I sent Gin's way look sincere. "So long as he doesn't shoot me, everything will be fine."

Gin actually flinched back, taking an entire step in the opposite direction. I watched him battle with himself as he stared at Krieg's back, and then up into my eyes, before he gave me an imperceptible nod and hurried past me. I guess our initial meeting had a bit more of an impact on him than I'd thought.

I could hear people fall over themselves to clear a path for Gin. I glanced over my shoulder at him, just as he passed the table where my crew and its two add-ons were seated. Luffy tilted his head and blinked at me, to which I responded with a roguish grin and a little wink, not really knowing at all what that silent conversation which we'd just had meant.

Ah, the joys of being part of an unorganised crime syndicate!

Anyone who wasn't watching Gin like a hawk still had their eyes glued to me, likely due to the fact that I was the only thing between them and the big bad missing link. I shrugged at their attention, more or less used to it after three days of dancing around the room with plates up and down my arms, and turned back to Krieg.

I poked him in the head with my shoe. He grunted at me, and shifted a bit. I sighed, using the last of the air in my lungs, and crouched down until I was as close to the floor as I could be while still being on my feet.

I then poked him in the ear with my finger. He gave off a shudder that was a little _too_ violent, before falling still again. That's some dedication to the craft; I think I almost scratched his brain with that last one.

"Hiya, Donald. Do you prefer Donald or Don?" He didn't answer me. I waited in silence for a moment, before shifting my weight until I was sitting on the ground. Crossing my legs in front of me, I leaned forward until my elbows were resting on my knees, a friendly smile tilting across my lips. "We're mates, so I'm gonna call you Donny. You don't mind that, do ya Donny? We're mates, yeah?"

The spasm that went through Donny's entire body told me that we were most certainly not mates. I heard a few sharp intakes of air behind me; apparently I wasn't the only one to spot it.

"So, I mean, starving to death sucks, yeah?" I rocked back a little bit, tapping out a random pattern on my ankle as I went. "I mean, the pain, the delusions, the irritating noises that your stomach always makes…"

I trailed off in a very 'hint hint' manor, tilting far enough to the side for me to see Krieg's face-

"Urrrghghhh…"

-Just in time for the prophecy to be fulfilled. Yeah, nice try Donny, but I saw your lips move. Master ventriloquist, you are not.

Of course, there was always the chance that he was actually starving and liable to die right there in front of me, but what would the world honestly lose if that were the case? Just another silverback from a dwindling population, what a shame.

I chuckled absently, swinging myself back upright. I'd gotten some dirt on my apron; I would have to brush it off before I was allowed back into the kitchen. I could hear pots and pans clattering in the back through the otherwise silent room, so everything for the downed Krieg Pirates must have been sorted out.

Which meant that my time had unfortunately been cut a bit short. Shame, too, I was really beginning to enjoy myself.

Shifting one leg out from underneath the other, I pulled it up into my chest, laying my arm over it. My other leg was stretched out, my toes tapping merrily against the top of Krieg's skull.

"I have a theory that you're a bit of a cunt, and you're not actually all that hungry right now." I told him outright, pitching my voice so it was loud enough to be heard throughout the entire room. Krieg flinched, and that told me all I needed to know. "See, what I'm thinking is that your entire crew is dying because you've been hoarding all the food for yourself and your elite officers. Seeing as your ship is completely ruined, I can only assume you're planning on stealing this one, or at the very least planning a raid on the kitchen and any safes lying about. All you're waiting for is the perfect moment to strike."

Nobody said anything as I wound off my little speech. I don't think Krieg was even breathing at this point. I was still wearing my smile as I tucked my legs underneath me, leaning forward ever so slightly so I could whisper in his ear.

"Am I close?"

Credit be where credit is due, I barely even saw the hand that was coming at me before it was clasped around my neck. Some people gasped, a few screamed, and I heard more than one chair scrape across the ground as Krieg climbed to his feet and I was hoisted into the air.

The hand around my neck tightened; I'm pretty sure I heard something creak.

Even though my feet were dangling off the ground, Krieg still had to physically look down to metaphorically look down on me. The sneer on his face suggested that he would be washing his hands after all was said and done, even though he was wearing gauntlets _and_ gloves.

"You're the waiter, aren't you?" His voice held none of its previous weakness. All I could do was nod; apparently physics went far enough to make me need moving air to speak. Lovely.

Krieg's sneer grew ever larger as he somehow managed to shed his coat with one hand, his armour sparkling obnoxiously in the light. A compartment on its side slid open, and I could do nothing but watch as a gun was deposited in Krieg's free hand, the hammer poised and ready to fall as he laid it to rest against my forehead.

"Too smart for your own good." Krieg's smile was far worse than his sneer. It was all yellowing teeth and smug superiority. The hand around my neck loosened slightly; likely so Krieg wouldn't have to combat against whatever momentum overtook my body once he plugged a bullet into my skull.

I sucked a breath down as quickly as possible. It was a race against a bullet, and by some fucked up form of cartoon logic, I won.

"Four hundred percent," I rasped out, the very first number that came to mind, letting my arm be overcome with the familiar feeling of strength beyond its capacity as I swung it up and into Krieg's jaw. His head snapped back instantly, the hand holding me up losing all its slack instantly. I landed on my feet as Krieg slammed into the wall beside the door, the hand that wasn't pulverised from hitting something at four times above its limits massaging my pockmarked throat.

Everything was coming back together nicely, but damn it all if Donny didn't have a solid grip.

I turned away from the door, smoothing out my apron as I went. Spotting Luffy, I shot him a grin and a thumbs up, and was just about to reach for the pocket that held my notepad and pencil when some woman near me started screaming hysterically.

I whipped around to face her immediately, eyes scanning for rogue pirates or rabid animals or any other such threat that would deserve such a reaction, but there was nothing there. The woman was looking at something behind me, and as the seconds ticked on, more and more people began to take notice of whatever held her attention.

Many people gasped, once again. Some parents covered their children's eyes. One man even threw up into the cup he'd been drinking out of. I glanced over my shoulder, but I couldn't see anything other than Krieg laying, ass-up, in a slowly expanding puddle of red. Just another thing I would probably end up having to clean up, joy.

I turned to my crew, the obvious question on my lips, but something bumped into my foot before I could ask it.

 _"DON!"_

Gin's shout came a moment too late. I was already glancing down, my eyes faster than the warnings coming from my brain.

I stared at the floor.

Krieg stared right back at me, his face partially caved in around the jaw area.

But wasn't Krieg over there near the… oh.

Oh dear.

 **XxX**

I'm not really sure what happened after that.

I was led away from the front of the restaurant by a pair of arms that were circled around my shoulders. I could hear the noises of the room, the cheers more prevalent than anything else. There was a weight in my hand, which my guide gave up on trying to remove after I resisted him.

I don't know why I squirmed out of his grip when he went for it. I don't know how I knew it was a he. All I knew was that it was hard to see, hard to hear, impossible to feel anything. All I knew was the comfort that I got from holding whatever it was that I was holding closer to my chest.

Eventually, I was led to the bathroom. I knew it was the bathroom only because of the mirror in front of me, letting me know exactly what I was sitting on.

I tried to swallow, but there was nothing there to support it. The brains that still lay in my stomach after days churned. There was a softer part to what I was holding; I gripped that to settle it on the ground in front of me.

I couldn't really see what it was, there were too many shadows clouding my vision. I didn't need to see it, though, I already knew what it was. It was my friend.

It didn't say anything to me, but it also didn't leave. It probably wasn't afraid, a far cry from what I was expecting. I tried to smile at it, but even if it wasn't going to say anything, I knew that I had failed entirely.

"...I figured he'd be able to take at least one." I really did, too. I mean, wasn't this a man capable of bringing together five thousand different men underneath one flag? Wasn't this a man who had been able to go toe to toe with Luffy, even if only for brief period of time?

My companion didn't say anything, no acknowledgement or reprimand. I was barely paying attention, too wrapped up in my own thoughts to really care what it was doing at that moment.

It was a fool's errand to avoid killing in this world. This wasn't my home, this was an alien world. An alien world filled to the brim with people capable or bizarre or deadly feats, with little to no regard for the lives of others. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that one day I would shoot someone with my bow, and that arrow would end up causing irreversible damage. It had already happened once, but that was just a dolphin; inconsequential, useless to the plot.

Dead for just over a month, and already two others had lost their lives.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to throw up a little bit, but I mostly just wanted to laugh.

"I wonder…" Absently, I raised my hand, and stared at the Haki coating my finger. Even after all this time, I still couldn't find a way to turn it off, make it recede into my body and out of sight. "I wonder if you knew this would happen…"

My personal Intern of Death did nothing to answer me. I sat there for a moment, staring at my finger, suffering from the silent gaze of my companion as my mind wandered.

Where would I go from here? Where _could_ I go?

The Straw Hats probably wouldn't kick me off. If I had offed someone like Ace, then absolutely, Luffy would renounce me as a member right after killing me. But who was going to care about Krieg?

Who was going to…

I sat up a little bit straighter upon the realisation. Who was going to care about Krieg dying? Maybe his crew, maybe some of the bounty hunters that had been after his head, but I didn't.

Why didn't I care? I was the last person to ever touch him; I killed him with my bare hands, so why didn't I care about him in particular?

The knowledge that I had robbed someone of their life made me feel slightly sick. Beyond that… I guess the proper term for it would just be _apathy_. Did he have a family? A significant other? Hell, a pet? Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but I couldn't have cared less.

Wasn't there supposed to be something like regret mixed in? Mourning? Anything at all? My head fell into my hands and I groaned, messing up my hair even further with the movement. I tried, as hard as I could, to dredge up any feeling at all, but even the sickness from before had rescinded. I was back to being a corpse, cold and dead inside.

"Why…?" I murmured to myself, my voice pitched too low for even my silent companion to hear.

 ** _You've faced the worst that Death can do_** , a voice whispered into my ear. My head shot up as the temperature in the bathroom seemed to plummet, but there was nobody standing in front of me. The mirror on the wall wasn't showing anybody behind me, either. **_Why care when you know he will never be able to match your suffering…?_**

The bathroom was silent, save my laboured breathing. Seems I'd reverted to human mannerisms as the temperature continued to drop, frost forming along the edges of the mirror in front of me as my breath escaped my mouth in visible clouds of fog.

The Haki coating my finger felt heavy, cumbersome. More like a tacked on addition than an inherent muscle or limb.

Abruptly, I stood. My hands, usually stuffed away into pockets, were resting at my side. My eyes, in contrast, were clenched shut. The only things I could identify from my surroundings was the ice still cracking along the mirrors, and the stare of my silent companion.

"So what, is that your plan?" I asked the air, eyes still closed tight. My arm twitched of its own accord, though it fell back to my side a moment later. Not feeling any difference in the atmosphere, I smiled slightly, my lips tilted upwards to show the faintest flash of teeth. "Am I not entertaining enough for you, is that it? Am I boring you?"

Something brushed against my chest, not solid enough to be called a force, but not subtle enough to be considered a coincidence. I barely shifted as it retracted, my defiance only lasting until something heavy connected with the back of my knees and I crumbled back into my seat.

 ** _Blaming something so far out of your comprehension for your own problems… Perhaps you'd like some advice before you continue along this road that you fail to_** **see?**

I felt the force again, brushing lightly over one particular pocket on my jacket.

I couldn't help it. I opened my eyes, took in the empty bathroom free of frost, and laughed.

What a fucked up situation: Sequestered away in some bathroom, alone except for some object I couldn't even see, being groped by an omnipotent force after having murdered a man with a single blow. I laughed until I ran out of air, and continued on silently until finally, I was able to force myself to calm down.

I took a deep breath, and for a moment, I could smell it. The citrus of whatever had been used to clean the bathroom, covering something far more putrid. There was a strange taste in my mouth, something beyond what I could ever hope to describe, but just as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished.

The smells and taste were gone. I was left in an odourless cube once more, faced again with the crushing, depressing reality of my existence.

"This, all of this… it's all pointless, isn't it?"

Suddenly, I was eleven years old all over again, curled up in a corner, crying, as the cruelty of mortality was finally fully realised. Pushing myself to my feet, I stumbled over my silent companion, plodding to the sink in front of me and gripping its edges as though it was the only thing keeping me afloat.

"You're well aware that I'm not going to eat the Fruit. You knew today was going to happen. You already know what's going to happen to me, don't you?"

The sink cracked underneath my finger. I stared into the mirror, not recognising the frightening grin being directed back at me for a moment. My reflection's eyes widened, before he vanished in a swirl of colour; his hair, jacket and skin all mixed together into a murky brown, with words emerging from the whirlpool to lay against a backdrop of blinding white.

 ** _Death is everyone's destiny. All a mortal may control is how they realise it._**

I hadn't been aware of the porcelain in my hands until it was crushed underneath my fingers. My reflection watched as my hand unclenched and powder rained down onto the tiles, but I wasn't looking at him. My mind was too far into turmoil for him to be of any concern.

"Predetermined by the future… what a fucking joke."

The kick I aimed at the pile of powder sent small shards hurtling into the wall. Every impact echoed through the empty room like the toll of a bell, hundreds of tiny gongs assaulting my ears as I stared at the ground.

"You don't fucking dictate me." The zip on my jacket was a gunshot. The rustle of my hand entering and exiting my pocket was reloading. I stared at the fruit in my hands, still as pristine as the day I picked it up. It would be so easy to crush it, to flush the remains down one of the many toilets in the room.

"I don't care who knows what, because I will always lose." I dropped the Fruit back into my pocket and zipped it up again, wiping my hand absently against my jeans as I rambled. "I don't care if you already know that I'm not going to eat the Fruit, you won't goad me into it that easily. You want to trick me into a deal with the Devil?"

I raised my glare to the wall opposite me. Was I addressing something above me, below me, or all around me? I had no clue.

"Up the fucking ante, mate, or don't even bother trying."

My pocket felt heavy, but that was easy enough to ignore. I thought, for a moment, that I felt a pulse from my chest, but when I dropped my eyes down and laid a hand against my ribcage, there was no movement.

I grit my teeth, closed my eyes briefly, and sighed through my nose. By the time I had reopened them, the tiles beneath my feet had shifted, their borders running into one another in completely differing patterns than before.

 ** _Soon enough, we will truly meet. Will you be ready when the time comes? That choice is yours, and yours alone._**

"Choice? Yeah, sure." I scoffed, stomping on the letter closest to my foot. The tiles had returned to normal before I had even gotten a chance to move, but it at least made me feel better. "And just so you know, I liked the first guy a lot more."

That declaration wasn't worth a response. I waited for a moment, entirely still, before there was a knock on the door. "Nami's called a crew meeting," called a familiar voice. Or was that just some strange deity using Zoro's voice? How could I possibly hope to know? "Look alive."

I would have responded with something sarcastic, albeit probably with far less enthusiasm than usual, but something chose that moment to tap against my leg.

I glanced down, mouth still open slightly.

Krieg stared back up at me, his bored eyes dull and lifeless.

I blinked. He didn't.

My subsequent laughter was probably grounds for an inspection of my mental state, not that there was anybody in the room to witness it.

 **XxX**

I was humming to myself as I waltzed out of the bathroom, a skip in my step and Krieg's head tucked underneath my arm. Zoro glanced up from where he was slumped against the wall; he had to do a triple-take before what he was seeing apparently began to make sense.

He didn't say anything to me as we set off, walking the corridor that housed the bathrooms and emerging out into the main room. There wasn't any customers, which probably meant that the restaurant had been closed for the time-being. There _was_ some dissent happening near the front doors, though. They rattled as I watched, and the collection of chefs keeping them closed all looked absolutely exhausted.

It didn't help that they were constantly slipping over in a red puddle. A suspiciously empty red puddle...

"The waiter dies today!"

Hey, that was Gin's voice!

"Where's Krieg's body gone?" I asked the air to my side, even though the question had been directed at Zoro. Evidently, he hadn't realised that I hadn't been walking alongside him any longer, and had managed to get more than halfway through the room before I even noticed he was gone.

I had to jog to catch up to him, as he ducked through a door that was marked for employees only. Seconds later, he was stumbling back through it, rubbing the back of his head and looking around with narrowed eyes.

"Damn room moved on me…" He grumbled, casting suspicious glares over everything in the nearby vicinity. He was looking in the opposite direction when the third door down from our left opened and a straw hat poked out, only to be yanked back in by a black dress shoe wrapping around the face attached to it.

The entrance shook again. Hell, the entire damn boat shook as something else slammed into the front doors. Zoro, seemingly coming to a conclusion, began to walk towards it, his steps only halting when I grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him back towards the door that was still open.

I shoved him in first, before he got the chance to complain, and closed the door on my way in. Seven pairs of eyes shot immediately to my face, before drifting down to my arm. Or, perhaps more accurately, the package within.

I didn't bother with them, though, because sitting in the corner of the room was what I had been looking for earlier. With a triumphant little "hahaha," I walked past them all, dropping down onto one knee in front of Krieg's body and pulling his cloak away like a magician would the blanket from their trick.

Placing Krieg's head back atop his body, albeit it upside-down, I began to poke at the armour covering his chest, searching for any grooves or latches; any clue at all as to how it all opened up. I had just started on the left side of his breastplate when fingers wrapped around my arm and I was lifted back to my feet, spinning against my will to once more face everyone in the room.

Zeff, in typical fashion, looked like he would rather be anywhere else. Briefly, after wondering when he would let me go, I wondered why he was even here in the first place, but another distant quake left me with a good enough answer.

Murder happens in his restaurant, member of murderer's group calls a private meeting inside his restaurant because they can't get out of it. Add into the fact that, at the end of the day, I _was_ his employee, and that left him with a pretty compelling case.

Nobody seemed too happy at the moment, not even Luffy. Nami's expression in particular was downtrodden, and her mood only seemed to plummet further when I focused on her. Wasn't she supposed to be somewhere else at this point? I had the strangest feeling that she was supposed to be somewhere else at this point.

Something thumped to the ground behind me. Shooting a quick glance underneath my arm, I could see that it had been Krieg's head.

"What are you going to do about him!?" Johnny suddenly shouted. I jumped and turned back to him, almost amazed that I hadn't pulled my own arm out of its socket with that movement.

"Eh?"

 _Bang_. Something in the distance crashed against something else, but nobody else seemed to preoccupied with it, so I decided not to worry either.

"The Krieg Pirates are demanding your head in return for his." Yosaku, ever the level-headed member of the duo, took a slow drag of his cigarette. Where did he get all those from, I wonder, and would he let me have one? "They also want his body, but seeing as his bounty technically belongs to you now, it's your choice whether you want to give them what they want."

Krieg's bounty? I hadn't even thought of that.

"Oh yeah, he does have a bounty." At long last, Zeff released my arm, stomping off into the corner to cross his arms and glare. I paid him no mind, absently picking up Krieg's head as it went to roll past me and tossing it between my hands. "How much would we be talking, here?"

 _Bang_.

To Yosaku's credit, he only looked extremely perturbed for a total of four seconds before he was able to shake himself out of it and answer me. "17 million, though thirty percent will be knocked off because he isn't alive."

Uhh, 17 million, 1.7… 17, 34, 51- holy shit.

"12 million because I punched a guy?"

Yosaku nodded. My hands stilled for a moment, Krieg's head lying face down in my right, and then my left was moving to my belt and retrieving one of my sharper arrows.

It was with a disturbing degree of nonchalance that I flipped Krieg's head over and drove the arrow up through his severed neck. Something splattered against my face, which I chose to do nothing about. Someone out of my eyesight, most likely Usopp, actually retched.

I smiled and hefted my arrow up, feeling whatever was on my face sliding down my cheek until it was within licking distance. "Back in a moment," I said with cheer that was half genuine and half exaggerated, my tone taking on an accent that was somewhere close to British as a result.

Hmm, that side of my heritage always was a bit unhappy with the other half of my ethnicity, but that's a story for another day.

"Where you going, Cask?" Luffy asked as I began to walk out. Unlike the others, his expression was simply one of mild confusion, like nothing that was happening at any moment other than the exact present was even important. Bless his headwear-clad little heart.

I didn't slow down.

"Died poor once!" I declared for the world to hear as I threw the door open and marched right through. "Ain't doing it again!"

I swung my arms as I walked, and as a result, Krieg's teeth chattered. It was with this fearsome war cry that the chefs of the Baratie all turned around, their jaws going slack as I strutted past them in all my glory.

The door, now that nobody was putting any effort into holding it, shook even more violently than before. I could have opened it like some sort of well-mannered gentleman, but unfortunately the inner well mannered gentleman had slipped over in the puddle that we'd just walked through together and was now unable to keep up.

It was wildly impractical, more than a little dangerous, and probably entirely stupid, but I'd always wanted to kick open a door like this.

"Four hundred percent!"

I mean, if it worked on a guy's head…

The door crumbled inwards as I spun around, and the first of the cheers were just starting up when my heel connected with it. The cheers were still happening when the door, along with some parts that weren't even still connected rocketed back the way they had come, taking out a sizeable chunk of the crowd outside.

Some of them actually _skipped_ off the water as they hit it. Those that didn't just made very big splashes.

Silence reigned supreme as I lowered my leg slowly, because I wanted to ensure I could still stand on it when it finally hit the ground. Honestly, I was surprised that had worked as well as it did; I had approximately zero training, excluding all those times I was making ninja noises in front of a mirror. Hell, I hadn't even dropped Krieg.

Whispers of, "Sanji," and, "owner Zeff," and, "what the fuck was that on his face," followed me as I hobbled valiantly out of the restaurant, heavily favouring my right leg. Krieg was tilting to one side a little bit, so I had to adjust him a little bit lest he fall off and roll into the ocean or something. Always a troublemaker, that Donny.

Apparently Gin had been standing back, out of the way of my entrance. There was also some twat on fire who had been standing beside the door, but a well-placed elbow to his jaw knocked him flat on his ass before he could wake up from his stupor.

I didn't hit him nearly as hard as I could have. I'd at least learned that lesson.

Gin's knuckles were white as he gripped his tonfa, his lips set in a hard line. I think he wanted to fight, but I really wasn't feeling all that up to it today. I just wanted to defuse the situation and hand in my bounty, was that so much to ask?

So, I looked at Gin, and gave him a friendly smile.

No, that's not right. I looked at Gin, and gave him a friendly grin.

No, no, that's still not right. I looked at Gin, and my lips stretched further than what I thought them capable of. Whatever was on my cheek lost its grip and hit the ground, and for some reason that was enough for Gin to pale beyond what I would have assumed the human body could achieve on the colour spectrum.

He was even beating out the colour of Nami's face earlier, and- shit, didn't she call a meeting a while ago? Crap, what if she tried to claim the bounty while I was gone!?

"Krieg was all about strength and shit, yeah?" I waved Donny back and forth for emphasis. Gin looked like he was going to be sick, but he still nodded. "Alright, cool. I'm stronger than Krieg, so I'm the Don now."

That's how it worked, right? I mean, that was how it worked in Lion King, I'm pretty sure. Lions are animals, and pirates are pretty much animals too, so I'm relatively sure that this is how it worked.

"Go do something elsewhere. Like, with your life, I mean." I waved Donny at him like a monarch would wave their sceptre after a royal decree. "Good, bad, I don't care. Just… I don't know, I'm bad at this. Fuck off, Don's orders. Bye."

With that, I turned on my heel, intent of going back inside to discuss payment plans with whoever knew the way to the bounty offices. My first step was encountered with something squishy, and after raising my foot, I couldn't help but send a suspicious glare Donny's way.

I'm sure he had two eyes before, right?

"You're falling apart on me, Donny," I muttered with a sad shake of my head, wiping my boot on the side of the walkway before continuing on my way.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Someone from my side called. I rolled my eyes so hard that I'm pretty sure something strained, but I still turned around, tapping my heel against the deck as I sought out whoever had spoken.

Best guess was the dumb looking one standing in the crowd that was probably a lot bigger than it had been before I got here. He was big, hulking even, standing in between the dumber looking one and the _really_ dumb looking one.

Everyone standing around him shrank back a little from my full attention. He stood tall, a considerable amount taller than me, in the face of it.

"Yes?" I asked pleasantly, tapping Krieg's forehead against my hip.

With the way his brow was scrunched, the poor man looked like a gorilla. Where did his gene pool go wrong, I wonder? "Why should we's listen to you just 'cause you says we should?"

...How could I argue with that?

"What's your name, mate?"

"Harambe."

"Well, Hara-" Despite being stood perfectly still, I still almost lost my footing. "Excuse me?"

"Harambe."

"...We're moving on." Maybe it was just a common name in the East Blue. "What did Krieg do whenever someone didn't obey him?"

Haram… I don't even want to say his name. Fucking _he_ scratched his ass, eyes clouded as _he_ tried to remember. "Uh… shot people."

I cracked the knuckle of my free index finger with my thumb and hefted Krieg's head until it was level with mine.

"And what do you think I will do," I bluffed with a perfectly straight face, "if you disobey me here?"

He blinked sunken eyes at me once, twice, three times before his eyelids widened and his face paled. I gave him a smile, because positive reinforcement is important, turning back towards the door and raising one hand in farewell.

There was still some door left on the hinges, which I did my best to avoid as I climbed back through that wreckage. Swiping a napkin from the first table I came across, I wiped at the side of my face, discarding the stained tissue in the last pot plant before the door before I pushed it open and slid back inside.

Seeing Nami crying, Usopp's ashen expression, Zoro's scowl, Sanji's utterly blank face, and the fury being masked on Luffy's face by the shadows of his hat brought a quick death to whatever positive emotions I may have been feeling in that moment. None of them were looking at me, the three who weren't part of the crew had vacated the room at some point in between before and now, and I had never felt more like a stranger to this group than I did in that moment.

"Uh…"

One by one, they all looked at me. I was still standing in the doorway, holding up Krieg's head on a stick, bewildered and utterly blindsided by the shift in mood.

Nami was the first to clear her throat, though the tears and mucus on her face remained.

"Cask... I need help."


	9. Certifiable

**A/N:** Something went wrong with the previous upload, I got an error message. This is a re-upload, to ensure that everything is in proper order.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

* * *

I'd heard a large majority of Nami's story before.

Arlong invading, the killing of Bell-mère, and Nami's new role on Arlong's crew were the parts that I'd come across multiple times. They were also the only things that I heard clearly, as I took one of the available seats at the table, rested my lips against clasped fingers, and wondered what the fuck I was going to do now.

"And now I'm due back soon to give him the money," Nami continued, her face now dried thanks to a napkin that Sanji had fetched for her. Her eyes were a different story, wet despite the fact that I'd never seen them look so dead. "After watching Krieg today, though… I'm not so sure that Arlong is going to keep his promise."

"You don't say…" I murmured mostly to myself, glancing around the room. Nobody seemed all too surprised beyond their initial reactions as they listened to what Nami was saying, which likely meant that the story was being repeated for my benefit. If that was the case, then my main question at this point was why?

Luffy had likely already made up his mind to help Nami at this point, so what difference did I make in this equation?

I pushed my chair away from the table, plucking Krieg's head off the ground and making my way over to the wall that his body was still propped up against. Resuming my investigation of his armour, I waited for somebody else to continue the conversation, because fuck if I knew what to say.

"My main problem, though, is that I'm five million short." My hands still for a moment over the armour's left shoulder plate. "One of my bags went missing on that island that we found you on, actually. Only thing left behind was a muddy pawprint that had something like an opposable thumb."

For whatever reason, that tickled something in the back of my memory.

"And you want to use Krieg." I surmised, with laughter in my voice. I'm not sure why I wanted to laugh, nothing about the situation was all that funny.

"No, I want… I need _help_."

Something halfway down Krieg's body reflected one of the room's many lights, drawing my eye to it. Sweeping the cloak back, I stared at the motherfucking _diamond_ that was embedded in the armour's gloves, my mind short-circuiting at the sight of it.

"I don't have the money, but I need to save my island." I rocked back on my heels, running my hands through my hair before pushing myself back upright. "I'm asking you to go up against Fishmen - against _Arlong…_ "

I had four direction in which I could walk, but that wouldn't do me any good, seeing as they all ended at walls. So I picked west, fell against the wall more than leaned, and crossed my arms.

Nami wasn't looking at me, or anyone else for that matter. She had her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, enough for her voice to be muffled but not enough to stop the tears from dripping. I had to wonder, however briefly, if it was an act. If it was, then it was brilliant, because it was making me feel bad for questioning whether it was an act or not.

"I want to be a Straw Hat…" She mumbled into the silence of the room. I heard her loud and clear, and I'm certain everyone else did too.

And the position that this left me in… wasn't the greatest.

Luffy, Zoro, Usopp, Sanji; all of them would rush off to help,and they would drag Johnny and Yosaku along with them. That much was obvious, that's what they'd always done and would always do. Nami was supposed to run away and then I wouldn't have to worry about anything, because everything had worked out before and everything would work out again.

I'd believed that. At some level, I'd honestly believed that. I mean, could I really be blamed in this situation? Really, the least shocking part of this whole deal was the fact that I died before even getting to my twentieth birthday.

I hadn't accounted for the fact that I was here. I had acknowledged it, because how could I not, but I had no plans. I had no real ideals or ambitions. Really, my situation was pretty much the same as Nami's, except the only hostage was me.

Apparently I didn't even have the illusion of freedom. I really did miss the first being that had spoken to me on that island; they may have lied to me, I had no idea if they had yet, but at least they were moderately entertaining. It made the sting of losing out on the afterlife ease at least a little bit.

Yep, just like Nami. I wonder, would she have been able to get strong enough to beat Arlong in just three years? I would have argued that perhaps she had a chance, but that was going off marginal memory and generally poorly written fan material.

Shit, could I even trust those memories? A chill went down my spine as my previous life, that of a perpetually drunk university student, flashed through my mind. All of it had felt real, or at least the parts that I could remember clearly through the haze of booze and prescription meds, but did that really mean anything? Was fabricating a quarter-lifetime of experience for three years of entertainment value really out of the realm of possibility for the idea of inevitability?

I shook my head; no, this was between the lives of Nami's village and Zoro's dream. I could save the infinite loops of thought for later, when my head stopped hurting and I figured out where I screwed the timeline over.

Sigh. Nothing could ever be simple, could it?

I huffed whatever air that was left in my lungs through the unfortunate gap between my front teeth, kicked off the wall, ran my hands through my hair one more time for good measure, and made my decision.

"I'll pull the boat if you need me to, and I'll fight Arlong and his school," That was the only reason I could think of for why they were even asking me at this point, "but we can't leave the Baratie, not yet."

"And why not?" Wouldn't you know it, that came from Zoro.

I glanced over at him, and offered a humourless smile. "Because I'm almost entirely certain that Mihawk is due to show up here sometime today, I just don't know when."

Zoro drew back more forcefully than I would have expected. He looked like I had just physically slapped him across the face at two hundred percent, his hands going down to his swords automatically. Nobody else said anything, probably too busy with Zoro's reaction, while I just re-crossed my arms and waited for the other shoe to drop.

It didn't take very long.

"How?" To my pleasant surprise, Zoro didn't draw any of his swords. Instead, he stood up straight and mirrored my pose. The effect wasn't diminished in the least by the fact that he had to tilt his head back slightly to look me in the eye. "How-"

"Do I know your dream?" I dropped my smile and turned on my heel, clicking the lock of the door shut and banging on it for good measure. At least five pairs of footsteps rushed away before I pounded on it again, thus getting rid of the other seven eavesdroppers whom had felt brave. That done, I turned back around, and heaved a deep breath.

"Do not interrupt me. What I am about to say will never leave this room, is that understood?" Most people would have stopped to consider what they would say in this scenario. That being said, I was not most people, and most people had never been and likely never _would_ be in this scenario, so instead I mentally braced for the shitstorm that was sure to follow and pointed at Luffy.

"Sabo is alive, and Ace will get himself killed in a few months if nothing is done." I moved on before I could allow myself a good look at his face, turning right back to Zoro so I would have some time. I don't think I would have been strong enough for whatever Luffy had in store before everything was said and done.

"There's a Marine Lieutenant in Loguetown who looks exactly like Kuina. I ship the two of you so fucking hard, by the way. You and Tashigi, that is, because… well, Kuina is dead."

Should have phrased that better. Should have. Phrased that. Better.

Ah, fuck it.

"Nami's already aired whatever I had on her, and there's nothing I can say about Usopp except for Yasopp, so…" I turned to Sanji, and offered him a sad smile, for whatever that may have been worth. "...66."

Sanji's face lost all of its colour. I snatched his cigarette out of the air as I fell from his insensate lips, clamped down on it with my molars, and peeled my shirt about halfway up my chest.

Despite everything, I couldn't help but feel oddly exposed as I grabbed one of the sharper looking knives from the table and plunged it directly into my heart.

As expected, it did nothing. I pulled it out, watched as the skin stitched itself back together to perfection, and lay the knife back on the table with more care than I usually would have shown it.

"To be honest with you all, I'm not sure how I know. I just woke up on an island one day with no heartbeat."

And thus came the hard part. The part that I was actually worried about. The part that would likely come back to bite me at some point in time.

"I woke up with memories of a world that I don't even know exists and a life I may never have led. I woke up after dreaming about a group of pirates who all decided to sail under one banner for the sake of their dreams, and I saw them at what was probably their lowest level. And then… then I joined them."

Thus came the part where I had the audacity to lie through my teeth to their faces. I clamped my lips around my pilfered cigarette, inhaling half of it in one breath and silently mourning the fact that it didn't burn even a little bit.

What was I going to tell them, the truth? Death and rebirth would be borderline impossible to wrap their heads around as is, almost certain destruction in less than three years would be even more difficult. Reality was a construct that I just wasn't strong enough to topple.

Life was fleeting, there one second and gone the next. My eyes fell on Krieg's body, still propped up in the corner of the room, dead with a simple quirk of fate and one additional punch. Something like that would never happen to the Straw Hat Pirates; they were just too full of life to be extinguished so easily.

I wasn't like them. I didn't belong here. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd _felt_ alive, and that was when I actually _had_ been alive.

My best bet was to hope that the times would line up and I would be away from the crew when it happened. Quick, quiet, and maybe if I was lucky, they wouldn't miss me for too long. It would suck to spend my last moments ashamed.

Shit, I'd made a mistake. My selfishness could have already screwed Luffy out of realising his dream.

It was at that moment that I realised how badly I'd fucked up.

The room was too small. The air, the air that I couldn't even breathe properly with my dead diaphragm, was too constricting. I dropped my eyes to the ground and strode to the corner, reaching down to hoist Krieg's body over my shoulder. His head toppled off as I heaved him up, which I caught with a finger up each nostril.

"I'm going to go put this on the boat." I waved Krieg's head around as I made my way to the door, dodging around the hand that Zoro had been trying to grab my arm with. Turning the handle with Krieg's gaping jaw, I stepped out of the room, spied the single customer in the dining room whom was currently enjoying some bacon, and poked my head back in. "Mihawk's having breakfast right now, just so you know."

I left them sitting and standing there before anyone could say anything else, intent on putting as much distance between myself and the crew as possible.

And if my voice wavered just a little bit as I walked away, then nobody said anything about it.

 **XxX**

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!"

Krieg watched on, unimpressed, as I kicked at the wall of the storage hold hold the umpteenth time, threading my fingers through my hair as sentence after sentence assaulted my mind.

 _Useless…_

 _Hopeless…_

 _Pointless…_

 _Failure…_

 _Weak…_

 _Alone…_

 _Doomed…_

 _Murderer…_

 _Victim…_

 _Just die…_

"I'm already dead! FUCK!" My hands were shaking as I tore them away from my head, taking some of my hair along with them. They didn't stay on the ground long, already climbing back up my body as I dove on my pockets and searched through the all frantically.

It wasn't there. The bottle, the bottle that I never let out of my sight wasn't there. Of course it wouldn't be there, I was already dead. I had no chemicals in my brain to make up for or suppress. None of this made any sense, where...what...why!?

"Not real...not real…" My own words couldn't even begin to block out the numerous voices in my head. There were more than usual; there hadn't even been this many when I was failing my final year of high school, sinking under the weight of my own fractured psyche.

The rest of my cigarette hadn't survived the long enough to even reach Merry's deck. I'd always limited myself to only one per day before, but what I wouldn't give to break that rule and get that little reprieve they were always able to grant me.

Why? Why, after all this time, after giving in to the voice, why were they back!?

 _Rigging around your neck…_

 _Maybe it'll work this time…_

The air was too warm. I couldn't even feel it, but it was just too warm. My clothes felt too cold. Krieg continued to stare, the look on his face taking me back three years as I was failed on attendance by people who didn't consider a psychiatrist's medical certificate valid.

"Yeah, well you can fucking judge me after you pull a new brain for me out of your armour!" He lost three teeth as I booted him away from me. I was tempted to go after him, but the sheer pointlessness of the gesture made me want to sink to my knees and throw up.

 _Absent..._

 _Absent…_

 _Absent…_

 _Fail..._

 _Failed…_

 _Failure…_

 _It won't matter when we're all_ _ **dead**_ _…_

"I fucking know this is your fault!" I shot a poisonous look at the ceiling and began rooting through my pockets again, searching for a bottle that I knew wasn't going to be there. I was panting, I could hear it, even if it wasn't doing me any good. It wasn't hurting me either, so why should I have cared-

My hand was in my left breast pocket when it brushed against something cool. Immediately, that feeling was invading my mind, silencing the voices that were mine as much as they weren't, and bringing with it a sense of calm I couldn't remember ever feeling before in my life. It felt like the world had fallen away from my feet and I was awash in a sea of clouds, my entire being resting against their cottony surface and sinking through into the universal concept that was the depths of nirvana.

I didn't want to move. I didn't want to breathe. I didn't want to do anything that would bring this feeling to an end, but I needed to know what was causing it. This was too good, too sudden to possibly be true or even plausible.

I withdrew my hand, and stared down at the tomato in my palm. It had a certain sparkle to its skin today, all nice and appealing and lustrous. My fingers twitched as the feeling of calm ebbed, and the Haki coating my index finger almost pierced directly through the heart of the Fruit as the glow left it and the whispers returned.

Suddenly, I was feeling too tired to even want to cry.

"So that's how it's going to be, is it?" I muttered, not really expecting an answer. The wood creaked above my head, as something beyond my comprehension shattered my expectations.

 ** _It would be nice, wouldn't it?_** The words swirled across the ceiling, crumbling away right after I read them and replacing themselves seamlessly.

 ** _To be rid of that which has plagued you for a decade? To finally have a mind that is entirely your own - all it would take is one little bite._**

There were waves splashing against the side of the boat. There were swords clanging against one another somewhere nearby. There were probably some birds making some noise too, but I couldn't really hear any of them. Silence greeted me, because even if I knew logically that there was nothing there, I couldn't possibly hope to hear anything over the screaming in my head.

It had never been this bad. Not even in my worst nightmares did I think it could possibly get this bad. My head was beginning to pound with the volume. I could barely hear myself think, and far be it from me to tell you what was being said to me.

My fingers tightened around the Devil Fruit, to the point where it was probably threatening to burst. It hurt. I'd given up on the thought that I may one day have been able to feel freely, but it hurt really fucking bad.

"This is how it's going to be." Anybody outside of my own head would have had no problems hearing me. To me, I may as well have been listening to my own words from the other end of the boat, with all available doors closed. I shut my eyes as a familiar, long lost lance of liquid fire arced through my brain.

 ** _It doesn't have to be_** , flashed over my eyelids. It left something akin to fireworks behind as it faded. Of course, it would be this easy, why didn't I think it wouldn't be this easy?

There was a choice here for me to make, I knew that. There was a choice here that I had already made, and would have to continue to make, but what was the honest point?

I'd back down eventually. I would have to, because I couldn't be stubborn for that long. Not sleeping meant I would get no reprieve from this shit. Hell, this body wasn't even mine. There was a connection between it and there that I couldn't hope to break, so it was stupid to think that _this_ was all that would happen to me until I complied.

"Live like this until I eat the Fruit? Not likely."

But I wasn't giving anything the satisfaction of knowing that I had caved.

Krieg watched me from the corner that I'd kicked his head into as I hoisted the Devil Fruit into the air and marched towards the door. "I still remember that first day on the island, you son of a bitch!" I shouted at the clouds floating over the boat, completely dismissing the fact that I'd almost just knocked Usopp off his feet. I didn't even notice he was there until he told me about it later.

"Hellfire, dark fire! Now gypsy, it's your turn!" I swept across the deck more like Quasimodo than Frollo, mainly because I'd accidentally kicked the doorway on my way out and had yet to regain my balance. "Choose me or your pyre, be mine or you shall burn!"

The voices had quieted down somewhat, and through the haze, I could see a sizeable crowd all looking up at me from the various decks of the Baratie. That didn't feel at all important to me. Nothing did, really, what was I doing again?

"Two attempts before I died and you think I won't be a repeat offender!?"

Ah, alright. Wait, what?

"LIGHT ME UP!"

It was like waking up from a dream about falling off a cliff when halfway between the bed and the ground. I was vaguely aware of my arm moving in an arc, but I wasn't really able to comprehend what exactly was happening until everything had slowed down and given me enough time to actually acknowledge the situation.

My face broke the metaphorical water as the Devil Fruit flew out of my hand. I would have groaned and thumped my head against the railing, but as soon as I tried, the water in front of me plumed upwards and outwards to reveal… a dolphin?

...With a knife taped to its flipper?

It chirruped at me, somehow making the noise sound disdainful. There was hatred in its eyes, which quickly shifted to surprise and faint pain as my ballistic Devil Fruit flew directly into its gaping mouth and slammed down its throat.

For a moment, it just hung there. Briefly, I checked for strings, winced as a cackle tore through my subconscious, and idly wondered how I could tell what a dolphin was feeling just by looking into its eyes.

Eventually, our gazes connected; me still blinking away the clouds in my vision, it's eyes glazing over as it gave me a short nod. For whatever reason, I couldn't shake the feeling that something monumental had just happened.

The last thing I saw of it before it fell back into the water was the knife taped to its fin going through… where I presume its stomach would be? It splashed back into the ocean, and red water came up to soak my face, my jacket, and much of the surrounding deck.

The only surrounding noise was the _ting_ of Zoro attempting to break the guard that Mihawk wasn't trying to hold up in any way, shape, or form.

"...Did I just kill another dolphin?" And why wasn't I on fire?

One of the deck's floorboards squeaked, and I whirled around to face the sound. Usopp _shrieked_ and jumped back, even though he was at least five steps away and I didn't have my bow on me at the moment. I would have to pick that up from my locker, or leave it there, it probably wouldn't matter given what I had in mind.

"Am I on fire right now?" I demanded, because I could have been on fire and just not known it. It had been what I was going for, at the very least, and there was only so much a great distance that spite could carry anyone.

Even though he already looked like he wanted to be somewhere else very badly, Usopp suddenly looked like he very badly wanted to be somewhere else. I didn't blame him, it was way too loud with all these people shouting over one another.

"F-fire? Uh, no, b-but the-there was the singing, and-and the screaming, a-a-and…" Shaking like a leaf that had just been told there was no paper, Usopp gulped in a very theatrical manner. "Cask, are you insane?"

Oh, was that all? "Certifiably, yes, actually." I winced as a sharp tone scolded me for dirtying his best friend, the ocean, with the filthy blood of a loyal elite. Whatever the fuck that means. "It's much less noticeable when I have my meds. When I don't I get to hear the voices again, they're my friends. I don't like them that much, though." I clamped my hands over my ears, for all the good it did (which was none), and shot Usopp a shaky grin. "Don't tell them, though, they get _loud_."

Usopp just blinked at me. Given how far his eyes had bugged out, that was an accomplishment. I waved at him, before replacing my hand over my ear and running through every curse word in every language that I knew in an attempt to distract myself.

Hah, migraines, am I right?

Owww.

"Well, that suicide failed, so I need to go talk to Zeff." I didn't get to see his reaction to my words, because I was already jumping over the edge of the boat. "First I'm gonna go hurl my guts, or something. Later."

"Wha- Cask!"

 **XxX**

 _…_

 _…_

 _…_

 _…Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? No…? Whatever, I've got the subtitles working, and that's definitely one of the stranger functions I've discovered for this thing thus far._

 _Anyway, there's something that I've been keeping from you all, and I think it's time to come clean._

 _Yes, I'm talking to you. Don't worry too much about this, I can see you all, for lack of a better term. Let's just say that I'm hopeless and talking to you from a future where I've had my eyes opened to the truth of all of this. Despite my best efforts, that Devil Fruit isn't going to stay out of me forever._

 _This won't be a regular thing. I'm just here to help along your understanding, because even my own accounts of what happened confuse me, and I just wrote them down with perfect clarity and context. You're not here for me, after all. You're here for_ _ **me**_ _._

 _Anyway._

 _To make a long story short, I lie._

 _It's part of being an author by nature. I was born with a single talent, that which is for the written word, and with that comes the ability to spin tales beyond even what I can understand. I entertain, I disorientate, I elaborate, but most of all; I lie._

 _The most common lie I tell is one that everybody can probably relate to. "I'm fine," you've said that before without meaning it. Your reasons are your own and it's not my place, nor my prerogative to pry into something so private. I mean, I certainly could if I wanted to, but that would take too much time and I'm far too busy in between my effort to write all of this down and stay ahead of the Marines. Turns out they don't approve of wanton murder of elites, even if it is their own fault._

 _Either way, I'm getting side-tracked. That happens a lot, far more often than I would like to admit, but if you've read this far you've probably already figured that out. Either way, the point is that I lie. And given you've only had my perspective to go from, it's not fair for me to keep you in the dark any longer._

 _The thing is, even if I had things I wanted to accomplish, I never really did believe in dreams. It's a by-product of the cocktail of drugs I enjoyed on a regular basis as issue after issue reared their ugly heads. I had things I wanted to do in life, of course, but there came to be a point where I just… gave up._

 _I stopped caring. I stopped caring about school, about relationships, about life in general. I started smiling simply because it was easier than dealing with those brave or social enough to question why I would frown. I started laughing, because the only freedom I could find from the relentless nonsense that would fill my head was when there wasn't enough oxygen getting to my brain. I started mixing my medications with all sorts of alcohol, because If they didn't do anything separately, surely they could beat back my inner demons when working together?_

 _I'm not interjecting here because I'm searching for sympathy. On the contrary, I fucking despise receiving sympathy. Not because I'm strong; I acknowledge that I was and still am weak in spirit, regardless of the leaps I've made in the control of will power. I cut every corner and cheated everywhere else so I could to get where I am, because no matter what I do, I can't find the strength to progress the traditional way. No, I hate sympathy because it does nothing._

 _It doesn't inspire, the crux of every matter is that I can't be inspired by anything. It's quite simple, and very depressing, but I've dealt with it in the best way I know how; I laugh at it. A sad fate, to do nothing forever more but laugh at myself, but damn if it doesn't make me feel at least a little bit better. I feel like I'm the worst, so I always act like I'm the best._

 _As a result, dreams would allude me, but I did what I do best. I lied, except this time, I lied to myself. I told myself that I had a purpose, a reason to live…_

 _And then I died._

 _Ironic? Sad? Yes and yes, but it doesn't matter anymore. I wouldn't say I've outlived my days as a child, as that would imply that I ever thought of myself as a child. It's only recently that I began to think of myself as a human. I was dumb, much like everyone else. I had things I wanted and things I didn't want, just like everyone else. I thought I was much more than my environment and my fellows, much like everyone else does, deep down._

 _Murderer, thief, monster. I've been called all three, and all three are entirely correct. Really though, I couldn't give less of a shit. What I have done and will do, I've done and will do as a proud member of the Straw Hat Pirates. I've looked through my own falsities and witnessed the truth, and I have to admit, I like what I see._

 _I'm fickle, I'm vain, I'm foolish and evil and free as a bird. Such is the nature of humans. Maybe I should have noticed it earlier, or maybe I did and just haven't yet told you._

 _After all, I lie._

 **XxX**

An envelope slammed into my face as soon as I entered the kitchen. When I say slammed, I mean that it actually hit me hard enough to send me stumbling back out the door.

Wrinkling my nose and peeling it out of the indent it had made along my forehead, I cracked my jaw back into proper alignment and glanced at the writing on the front.

Haki-Eggplant pay/severance pay - 273,200

Wow, generous. Depositing the envelope in one of my free (and larger) pockets, I made my way towards the kitchen door, cautiously poking a hand in and waving it around before committing to it and stepping back into Zeff's domain.

"You're fired." He told me without looking up from the pot he was stirring. It was just the two of us back here, I quickly realised; everyone else must have been busy outside, watching the World's Greatest Swordman in action. I couldn't really blame them; given how much of an uproar Krieg managed to cause, it was safe to assume that not a lot happened around here on a daily basis.

"I want a permanent position."

"No."

"I'll work for a quarter of the pay."

"No."

"I'll work for free."

 _That_ finally got a reaction. Zeff paused his stirring, straightening up and glaring down at me with what could have been genuine hatred. I stared back as impassively as I could, because even down a leg, Zeff was absolutely fucking terrifying in person and even if I wasn't entirely sure I could still shit myself, I wasn't looking forward to finding out.

"You planning on abandoning your crew, Haki-eggplant?" Zeff wasn't that much taller than me. Hell, I'm not even sure he was taller than me without the stupid hat, but damn it all if I didn't feel small.

"Just put up with me for three years." I shrugged up at him, even as I felt my argument shooting itself in the head. Really, offering to work for free had been the most of it. There wasn't even any point in contesting what he'd said, because that was exactly what I was planning on doing. "Then just give me a raft made of broken plates or something and send me on my way. You'll never hear from me again, I promise."

The glare eased up a little bit. That was finally the point where I looked away, because I wasn't offering my body in the line of duty for it to be scrutinised. The kitchen was as clean as ever, and without the large majority of morons that Zeff had hired, its glistening surfaces really shone through. I wonder, what was in that pot, and was it burning yet?

"…You're being hunted." It wasn't a question. I must have given it away with my body language, because from the corner of my eye, I saw Zeff cross his arms and lean against the bench behind him. We both stood there for a moment, before I sighed and decided to cave first.

"They're always watching." I pretended not to notice the suspicious glare Zeff directed to every corner of the room. Really, it was kind of funny, but I cleared my throat to ensure I still had his attention. "We have a deal. I get three years to live and prepare to fight for my life at the end of it. Right now, I'm about a month and a half in."

" ** _LUFFY!_** " Zoro screamed from somewhere outside, his voice loaded with emotion. We both studiously ignored him.

"So, you don't even plan on fighting for your life?" Zeff grunted, moustache twitching even further downwards in his displeasure. "You're far too young to be giving up hope, Haki-Eggplant."

"They've apparently got a lot riding on me surviving. I want to spite them." I shrugged, a wry grin splitting my lips at the sheer audacity I was displaying, because I'm such a little prick. The grin was promptly dropped as Zeff opened his mouth again. "Look, if my crew ever finds out about this, then they'll try to fight for me. I know they will, but this has nothing to do with them."

I could see it now. I would lose my everything in about a nanosecond and leave them all to the mercy of whatever had fucked my everything out of existence. If he got attached enough, then there was no doubt that Luffy wouldn't stop until he got his revenge, but there was a limit to how much one group of people can accomplish.

I couldn't let that happen.

"I'm doomed." I concluded quietly, barely louder than the bubbling pot on the stove. "They're not."

Zeff continued to stare at me for a long moment, before moving back to the stove and reclaiming the wooden spoon he'd been using to stir. "The chefs of the Baratie fight for one-another as well, you know," He stated matter-of-factly, as if that meant shit all to me.

"That's why they're never going to find out, and I'm never going to let them get attached." Living on a ship the size of Merry would make that an inevitability, riggings or not. Living like a vagabond on something the size of the Baratie would be much easier, and it would afford me the minimal amount of human contact I would need to keep the dregs of my sanity about me and not lose my mind to the longing for social interaction. Nobody had to get hurt, and all it would cost me was a pair of headphones.

Plus, washing dishes for three years wouldn't be that bad. It's not like I had any will to live left to lose.

Zeff was staring at me again, obviously more than a little unconvinced with my arguments. I very dearly wanted to slip into the accent that I'd cultivated for nearly two decades and begin to curse him out, but that wouldn't do me any favours. So, I tried a last ditch effort.

I bent, somewhat stiffly, at the waist, and lay my hands against my thighs. I may have been begging, or I may have just implied that his mother gave birth to him after a night of passion with a donkey, but either way I was just copying anime. I'd have to stab myself in the neck later to regain at least some flecks of my dignity, if there was even any tangible fragments left in this world or any others.

"Plea-"

Now, if you've never had the pleasure of feeling a peg-leg in your face, let me explain the experience to you. Ahem; fucking _ow_.

I went crashing through the kitchen doors, somehow weaved around every table in my path, and veered the side before I could reach the front door. I came to a halt mid-air and began to spin rapidly until the door I'd stopped in front of, one that was labelled for employees only, swung open of its own volition. Flying through, I hurtling to a bruising stop in front of my locker, and began to flail against it until the right combination had been punched in and my bow was slung over my shoulder. That done, I flew back out the door, spinning like a top until one of my belt's loops caught the handle and closed it behind me, before finally slamming into and through the wall right beside the front door.

I then bounced off the deck, got enough air to completely clear the rest of the dock, and only came to a final stop when the Going Merry's sail caught me and miraculously didn't tear under the strain of my ballistic momentum.

Don't worry, I wasn't hurt by the time I touched down on Merry's deck. My face broke my fall.

There could have been an emotional scene between chefs while I was down. Don't quote me on that one.

I spat out a mouthful of splinters as I pushed myself back to my feet, stumbling a few times and having to grip the railing to regain my balance. My head, all over the place as it had already been, now felt like what I can only assume clothing would feel like in a spin dryer. Through my triple-vision, I could make out Zeff's hand poking out of the Baratie's front doors and giving me the finger, before it shifted to Sanji's direction, whom I hadn't actually noticed until that point. The hand waved, and then Zeff's other hand joined it to give Sanji the double-fingered salute.

"Well fuck you too, you stumpy cunt!" I may have been slurring a little, I'm not sure. But insult Sanji, will he!? "Good luck finding a busboy with more dedication than me!"

Haha, kidding. I don't give a shit about Sanji, I just wanted a reason to yell.

I was definitely stumbling as I made my way over to Usopp and snatched the rope that he'd just tied to the mast out of his hands. And maybe, just maybe, I tied it around my neck once I was stripped down and in the water, away from prying eyes.

Because I can dream, damn it.


	10. Delphinidead

This was a conspiracy.

The Conomi Islands weren't all that far away from the Baratie. It had taken a bit of trial and error, but if I was going as fast as the ropes we had access to could take, then Nami had predicted that we would get there just as night was beginning to fall.

My job was easy; literally just towing the boat in a straight line, against any tides that tried to push us off course. There was no learning curve to speak of, it wasn't interspersed with random human contact, and I didn't have to listen to anything beyond what my mind could come up with (even if that was currently a fair bit).

All in all, it was fast becoming my favourite job to date. It was beating retail, at any rate.

No, the hard work wasn't an issue for me. Without the build-up of lactic acid, nor the micro-tears in my muscles to worry about, taking a break and being subjected to the horrors of interaction with other persons was a thing of the past. My gains were also a thing of the past, but sacrifice is good for the soul, which I also apparently no longer had.

Hmm.

What was the issue, however, were the constant attempts on my life. All of which had taken place in the hour since we'd left the Baratie.

It wasn't even noon yet.

I didn't even know the East Blue _had_ that many dolphins. I say _had_ , of course, because I'm pretty sure that I had cut their population by at least a quarter by that point. They were everywhere as soon as I was in the water, and for whatever reason they just kept coming for _me_.

How did that quote go again? 'Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action'? Yeah, something like that, but what did it become by number 487?

Seriously, I'd been counting.

The first had been innocent enough. It had come up to me, tried to nuzzle my face, and chattered irritably as soon as I pushed it away. I didn't trust dolphins, see, too intelligent while also lacking the opposable thumbs required for living in the modern world. In other words, they had reason to be constantly angry due to the ostracisation of the land-lubbers, and the brains necessary to apply that anger into something constructive.

Like a death ray that was powered by the Earth's core.

Either way, I was right to not trust it. As soon as it got close enough again, there was a gun in my face, the barrel poking me in the nose. It was being held up to me by that same dolphin from before, I knew because it had a crescent scar over its left eye, and I did what was fast becoming reflex for me whenever a gun was being held to my face.

Good luck applying that gray mist that used to be your brain now, you fish-looking fuckstick. Shouldn't have poked your head above water where my fist was if you wanted to keep it.

Unfortunately for me, that was when a whole group of them decided to show up. Nah, group's the wrong word, it's got something to do with bean-pod! That was when a whole _pod_ of them decided to turn up.

It was dolphins, dolphins as far as the eye could see. They were clicking, the voices started clicking, I think I was clicking at one point. Then they were clicking guns, and things left whimsical and entered the Grand Line.

They all had some form of human weaponry.

There were automatic rifles, revolvers, knives, swords, and I'm pretty sure there was a dolphin near the middle that was painted red and wielding a flamethrower. One of them closer to me pulled out a rocket launcher. Pulled it out from where, you ask? Probably the same place the dolphin beside it got that morningstar.

How did they have all these forms of human weaponry, and the ability to use them, you may ask?

Good question, I fucking don't know.

I don't think I want to fucking know.

It was absolutely hectic.

I tried cutting a path through them all as quickly as I could, because I had shit to do and I was already in a bad enough mood what with the countless voice in my head all screaming over one another, but that was proving a bit difficult. It was like trying to drive pedal to the metal through a packed crowd; _things_ happened.

Given the amount of _things_ happening in the general direction of the Going Merry, it looked like the Straw Hats were going to be eating tuna for a while.

It was glorious and bloody and really sort of repetitive after the first few times, so just take my word for it.

I weathered it for fifteen minutes, _maybe_ twenty if I'd lost track of time, but eventually it got to be a bit much. Slapping two of the dolphins away with another dolphin, I stopped all momentum and paddled to the side, waiting for the rope that was attached to the mast to yank me out of the water full-cartoon physics style.

Fortunately, it worked. Unfortunately, it left me spitting splinters after I managed to dislodge my teeth from the railing. That was easy enough with the holes in my gums closing up anyway, and for the first time since we'd left the Baratie, I was able to slow down and actually take in my surroundings at a leisurely pace.

...That was a lot of dolphins.

They were piled high against the wall beside the galley door. When I say piled, I mean that if I was back home, five years old, and they were kittens instead of dolphins, I would have been wearing a muzzle and about eight straight-jackets before I could even make that joke about tuna.

In a time when I was struggling to think clearly, this sort of shit really wasn't helping me.

At least Zoro was hobbling around and putting a sword through the ones that were still reaching for their weapons, all the while being so wrapped up in bandages that he looked like he'd just been pulled out of a sarcophagus.

The chefs of the Baratie were apparently very thorough, if _that_ was all Zoro had managed to unwind in the time he'd had. I would help him, as the others were all too busy looking at me like this was somehow my fault and that left him as my only ally against the watery menaces, but I was fairly certain that they were there for a good reason.

I hadn't actually _seen_ any injury being inflicted upon his person, after all.

"Why is it always dolphins with you?" He grumbled as he walked past, enthusiastically poking a dolphin in the side when it attempted to raise a knife to his shin. Maybe a little _too_ enthusiastically, but oh well.

I could do nothing more than shrug at his back, before glancing over the railing and into the waters below. Almost as soon as I stuck my head out, I had to retract it as about thirty bullets, five knives, a pair of bola, a cloud of what could have been shuriken, a dolphin, and an RPG tore through the space that it had been inhabiting.

"...Does anybody speak dolphin?"

Yeah, it was one of _those_ days.

But hey, at least it couldn't get any worse- wait, no, I take that back! I take it ba-!

 **XxX**

Spontaneous dolphin attack aside, it was actually a lovely day outside.

Not that you could really tell, what with the cloud of dolphins blotting out the sun and much of the surrounding sky.

The door to the galley shuddered violently, rattling against my back as something slammed into it. Both it and I held strong, against the attackers outside and the dirty looks that were being shot in my direction by anybody _not_ trying to come up with a plan… and Luffy. We'd not even had a chance to drop the anchor before the Going Merry was being boarded, and wasn't it just our luck that it was by one of the only creatures in the ocean that breathed air?

We were being boarded by _dolphins_. Fucking _dolphins_. The worst part is that I didn't even know if this was something that I should have been _expecting_. Guy turns into smoke before the Grand Line, we get insurgent dolphins?

And where the fuck was my bow?

The portion of door right above my head exploded inwards as a dolphin… snout? Beak? I don't know the terminology, but I could feel one of them nibbling on my upturned fringe. Predictably, Usopp shrieked as he was showered in splinters, doing his level best to disappear even further underneath the table as I stepped away from the door and turned around.

I was trying a new thing, accessing my Percentiles without saying anything. I'm not sure how well it was working, but I managed to kill another dolphin with a fist to the face and send it flying out of the hole, just in time for another to take its place, its mouth gaping wide and its body blinking red.

It chattered in my face. Needless to say, I was somewhat glad I couldn't understand it, because I probably would be too busy laughing to ensure that everyone could stay relatively alive.

"EVERYBODY DOWN! FOUR HUNDRED PERCENT!" There were dolphins with propellers instead of flippers outside, some of which were wielding guns I wouldn't have expected to see anywhere outside of a museum. I think one of them in the water earlier had a human fist while it was punching me. I was _not_ going to take my chances when one of those fuckers turned red.

My first investment of Krieg's life insurance would have to go towards a new door for the kitchen, after I tore the one we were currently using right off its hinges and practically dove for the edge of the boat. The red dolphin twitched as I valiantly used it as a meat shield against the hail of bullets following me everywhere I went, and let out an angry screech when I tossed it overboard, into a large group of its fellows.

"FOR THE KINGDOM!" One of the exploding dolphins screamed, in English. Or maybe it was Johnny, it sounded vaguely like it could have been Johnny. Figures that prick would be a spy for the dolphins, I never did trust him.

"FOR THE MOTHERLAND!" Another cried out as it leapt for my face. It missed and managed to impale itself on a blade that had also been aimed for my face. Figures that dolphin would be a sleeper agent for the Straw Hat Pirates, I always did trust that dolphin.

"YOU LIVE IN THE OCEAN!" I matched their volume and grabbed the flipper that was somehow holding the sword, sweeping it around in an arc and killing another five dolphins. For some reason they all burst into confetti as soon as the sword touched them. The flipper holding the sword slackened, and before I knew it, I had my hands full with a sobbing dolphin and an attack that didn't have any hope of being effective through all those tears.

It slapped me twice, missed the third try, and was knocked off the side of the ship by an egg splattering against the side of its face. I nudged the loose tooth back into place and turned to the galley, where the rest of the crew were attempting to flood out and retake the ship. They were having a hard enough time getting out of the doorway, at least until I grabbed the dolphin closest to me and hurled it into the crowd. They scattered like bowling pins as their ballistic kin tore right through them, bouncing every which way like pinballs surrounded by bumpers.

There were even sound effects to go along with it.

"No time to explain!" I didn't really know what to say, so I went with the first thing that came to mind. Fortunately, time was one of the many things I lacked in this situation. They all looked at me, covered in blood that wasn't my own with a sea creature hanging off both arms as I was, before springing into all kinds of action.

Nice to know they agreed, I thought while absently clapping enthusiastically and reducing the additions on my hands to mulch.

God, if I gave any kind of a shit about animals, I would probably be so annoyed with myself right now.

It was a conflict that would go down in history as one of the weirdest fucking things to ever happen in the East Blue, second to birthing _two_ consecutive Pirate Kings. We, an unassuming group of rookie buccaneers four strong, facing off in mortal combat against the greatest threat the ocean had ever seen. I say four because Johnny and Yosaku are little bitches who had a dolphin friend that one time, Nami was considering going vegan, and the Great Captain Usopp had already been unfortunately indisposed on the way out the door.

That left me, Zoro, Sanji, and Luffy. Luffy because they were a threat to the crew, Zoro because there were things to stab that were trying to stab back, Sanji because dolphin is delicious and currently free of guilt, and me because fuck dolphins.

Taking on a force that easily numbered in the _thousands_.

In the _East Blue_.

Was this a fever dream? I wouldn't be surprised if this all ended up being a bad fever dream.

We all stood there, back to back to back to back, weapons and fists raised. I had my Haki finger on point, Zoro had all three swords out of their sheaths, Sanji was balancing on one foot with no issue whatsoever, and Luffy was gripping his bicep with one hand and had the other clenched by his side. The vile beasts had us surrounded, their clicking a declaration of war as much as it was a roar of bloodlust and motivation.

For a moment, all was still. Enemies though we were, in that silence I could feel their reasons for fighting. I could feel their strength, and the pain of their fallen. I could feel all that was giving them the will to continue, and with that insight I took their strength as my own.

...And then something exploded in my face, because I was too busy monologuing silently to listen to the warnings, and I was sent rolling towards the edge of the boat.

"Lucky shot!" I called woozily over my shoulder, my eyes tracing the beginnings of a whirlpool that was starting to form around the Going Merry with no small amount of trepidation. The boat lurched as a wave crashed against its side, sending more dolphins on board and knocking us all around.

Wiping my soaking hair out of my face, I caught a flash of green from the corner of my eye, and subsequently caught the grenade that had been launched from somewhere near the Going Merry's bow. It had no pin, a point that made me hurl it over the edge of the boat just as quickly as it had come, and the resulting plume of water smashing into my face almost knocked me to the opposite side of the boat. Usopp came stumbling blindly past me as I pulled myself back to my feet, my bow in his hands and most of his top half trapped in the unfortunately confines of a dolphin's mouth.

I snatched my bow out of his hands, gave him a little push so he wouldn't topple over the edge of the railing, and leapt for the rigging. Another three anti-aircraft rounds came screaming at me from the water, curling around the rigging as I scampered up as quickly as my legs could carry me and utterly ignoring the nonsensical turns I was taking to lose them.

Don't think about how, for that way lies madness.

If you asked me what happened after that, I would have told you that I faked the rockets out with a cheeky manoeuvre that left me hanging upside down in the optimal position to snipe them out of the air. In actuality, I missed a step entirely and plummeted, only managing to stay out of the water by virtue of my foot getting tangled up in the rope. The sniping part is true, though, and let me tell you, it is _difficult_ to aim while upside down and shooting at rockets.

The explosion from one of them _did_ swing me out of the way of a cannonball, but it _also_ swung me into the way of a flaming chainsaw. I managed to escape that one with most of my foot still intact, duck underneath the rubber fist that knocked out one of the dolphins above us that had propellers instead of fins, and hit the ground in a perfect three-point landing that was immediately ruined by Zoro slamming down on top of me. Then he rolled off, I got a sword to the back and out the chest courtesy of the dolphin he had been duelling, and almost immediately was besieged by a group of three wielding flails.

I could only hope this wouldn't end up hurting the Going Merry too much. It was supposed to be alive eventually, wasn't it?

They all sneered at me from underneath their masks, each a different primary colour. I had to blink a few times just to make sure that they were really there.

"We are the amazing-!" The dolphin on the left raised its fin in a grand gesture, giving me ample time to climb to my feet, notch an arrow, and fire it. The dolphin on the right and the dolphin in the middle both attempted to swing their flails to deflect the arrow, only to hit each other's weapon, deflect _them_ , and receive their own weapon to the face. They both went down in a shower of M-rated glory.

Then the third one got an arrow to the brain and went down like a sack of shit.

"Amazing," I muttered to myself as something skimmed past my head and took a little off the top. A quick grope of my belt let me know that I was down to my last arrow, and as I grabbed it and pulled back the string of my bow, the boat lurched again and a hush fell over the deck.

Followed quickly by a shadow.

Say, how big could animals in the One Piece world get? Because I don't want to believe, but if I was going by the way the shadow stretched on beyond the Going Merry and only stopped somewhere around the horizon, I had a feeling that I would very soon have to believe.

I could have been having a lovely time washing dishes. Instead I get to deal with this nonsense. Life is unfair.

I turned around and looked up. And up. And up some more. Beady little eyes filled with vitriol glared back down at me, from where they were stationed near the clouds.

Little is relative, of course, seeing as each eye could very easily fit the Going Merry at least seven times within each pupil.

I don't know what I could have called this thing. If I was only looking at its head, I would have called it some sort of mutated dolphin. Going further down its neck, however, revealed small appendages that would periodically twitch in response to whatever stimuli I couldn't see. It had limbs, numerous outcroppings of skin or flesh that never truly went anywhere and ended up twisted beyond all recognition. Markings, some of which I could only explain as arcane ran up and down its grotesque body in seemingly random patterns, and they seemed to pulse in tandem with what could have been a heartbeat.

It _could_ have been a Sea King, but something about it felt off from the other specimens I'd glimpsed through a computer screen in the past. Where they had been absurd and somewhat silly to look at, this thing was nothing short of terrifying.

It was _beyond_ hideous. It was monstrous, it was commanding, and it was all I could see. It meant little to me that the deck of the Going Merry was finally completely clear of everything bar the blood that had been spilled and the humans that had boarded at the Baratie, I was too entranced by the beast before me to pay attention to anything else.

There was too much to take in, but I tried anyway, looking up and then down and then up again. It watched me all the while, its eyes so tiny in comparison to the rest of its body and yet so easily matching the rest of its domineering presence in sheer power alone.

Suffice it to say, I felt small. _Insignificant_.

The way it moved under my gaze made me believe it could crush the world. It blinked. The movement created a shockwave that pushed all the clouds away from its head. It opened its mouth and breathed in. Our sail was almost ripped right out of its place as the wind picked up, a plume of water lifting out of the ocean and making it a good few metres into the air before it lost all momentum and crashed back down.

Belatedly, I saw the crown resting lopsided atop its head, almost comical in its addition to the abomination before me. Had it not been eclipsing the sun, maybe I would have risked the laughter.

And then, it spoke.

It fucking _spoke_. To _me_.

 **"THE BLOOD OF MY SON… IT STAINS YOUR HANDS."**

The words were the chirp of a dolphin, warped through teeth the size of a whale and the vast expanse of empty air between us. The wind picked up almost immediately as it came down on top of us, crashing back towards the ocean like the sky had been knocked out from over us.

The first gusts hit us before it could get even halfway down. I barely felt it, paralysed as I was by the sight before me. The boat shuddered, something creaked and something else snapped, and a wave five times taller than me began to build up right underneath us.

And just like that, we were blasted _way_ off course.

 **XxX**

I want you to imagine, just for a moment, that you've climbed aboard a rollercoaster.

Already, you know what to expect. Maybe you've been on a rollercoaster before and are looking to replicate that first experience. Maybe you're like me, having only second-hand accounts and stories to go from because you've never had the chance to ride one.

Either way, you're on this rollercoaster. Lights are flashing. You're laughing along with your friends while some generic music blares through the few speakers that are scattered around.

However, something is wrong.

You've already taken your seat, but no bar is coming down to ensure your safety for the duration of the ride. Your merriment is put on hold for a moment to allow brief annoyance; what could this delay possibly mean?

And before you know it, you're moving. There's no announcement and no warning, just no movement one moment, and top speed the next.

Imagine that this sudden acceleration doesn't immediately kill you. Imagine that you don't instantly slip from your seat during the first loop and fall to your death. All you have to keep you in your seat and out of harm's way is gravity, your own strength, and perhaps even the intervention of others both on the ride and off.

That's what it felt like when the Going Merry started to move.

There was no warning. One moment we were under the scrutiny of some Lovecraftian monstrosity, the next we were trying to shield our eyes from the sun and hold onto whatever we could grasp under the tempestuous assault.

The Going Merry skipped off the water more than a few times during its tumble, and each time we flipped, I got more worried that in amongst the chaos, Luffy had fallen into the ocean at some point in time. Things hit me repeatedly; I say things because I couldn't even begin to imagine what some of them were. It was all moving too fast for my eyes to have any hope of keeping up.

It was after about twenty seconds of solid travel that something slapped into my face and stuck there. I could still see - whatever was covering my face was covered in tiny holes that let in just enough light to let me know that I was still above the water. I curled my arms around the railing I was holding tighter, no longer trusting my most basic sense to help me in this situation.

Eventually, the journey began to calm down. The roaring winds began to die down to a light breeze, before stopping altogether. The ocean that had been slamming into us relentlessly gradually calmed until it was entirely flattened out, with not so much as a ripple touching the Going Merry's hull.

I hesitated, just for a moment, before reaching up to pull away whatever was covering my face. The sudden influx of light in my eyeballs had me covering my eyes with my arm and blinking away spots. After a moment, I lowered my arm and squinted through the light, trying to ascertain the damage that had been done.

It… it really wasn't pretty.

The deck of the Going Merry was in shambles. Literally in _shambles_. What wood wasn't outright _missing_ was scarred horrifically. The mast was in three pieces, one of which was still sticking out of the ground. The other two had been flung into and through the opposite walls, opening up both cannon decks and strewing their contents everywhere it could get to. The sail was miraculously mostly alright, with only a few small tears decorating the otherwise pristine cloth.

The crew members didn't seem to be holding up quite as well. Johnny and Yosaku were both hanging over the railing a couple of metres away from me, puking up whatever was in their stomachs. Nami was slouched against one part of the broken mast, rubbing her head and trying to stem the red flow that I could see going down one cheek. Usopp was shaking against the ground, Zoro had just ripped Wado Ichimonji out of the wood he'd been using to anchor himself and was dutifully wiping splinters off its blade.

Luffy was tangled up in the rigging (phew), and I couldn't see Sanji anywhere.

My legs were absolutely quaking as I pushed myself off the railing and tried to use them to support my entire weight. My body was an absolute mess, given that I had weathered the initial hit of wind full frontal without a chance to find cover. Everything was still in one piece, but what wasn't hanging on by a thread was liquid on another limb. I was soaked through to the bone; the only noise coming from me that was more consistent than the water drops hitting the deck was the soft clicking as my body went about putting itself back together.

"Is everyone still alive?" Zoro called from where he was sitting, amidst a nest of wooden shavings. He received a series of grunts from everyone within view, including me, because I really wasn't in the mood to crack any jokes.

Usopp shrieked at the top of his lungs.

All of us jerked at the sound, with everyone but Zoro and I immediately groaning from the pain. Usopp's voice cut off suddenly as he lurched to his feet, only to immediately topple over onto his back.

"S-s-s-sorry, everyone. N-needed to let that out!" He shot us what could have been a thumbs up, but with the way his hand was shaking, it was difficult to tell. He then glanced around, and frowned. "Anyone know where Sanji is?"

"Here." Came the quiet reply from the direction of the kitchen. I glanced up and couldn't help but stare in wonder as Sanji ducked out of the partially collapsed doorframe and hopped down to our level, both hands filled with various things. He strolled effortlessly through the debris, and I can say with confidence that this was the first time I had ever been jealous of another man's legs.

He dropped to a knee when he reached Nami, carefully laying what he had in his hands down beside him and brushing her hair back. From where I was sitting, I could see a nasty gash running down the side of her ear and part-way along her forehead. I could already tell that was going to scar.

Sanji's hands went back down to what he had been carrying with him, and I pushed myself up a little further to get a better look at what they actually were. He picked up one of the items, a first-aid kit, and began to rummage through it. My eyes, meanwhile, fell on the sheep head-adorned pole that he'd brought with him.

No, wait, not a pole. That was the Going Merry's whipstaff.

Shit.

I groaned and let my head fall back. Unfortunately, I misjudged just how much my body could counterbalance, and ended up falling onto my back. The dull thud of my impact echoed out across the ocean, and I listened to it go before something occurred to me. I glanced at the sail, squinting against the sun to see it, and that was the moment that everything clicked.

"Uh, guys?" There was something missing in the picture. Something that had become a constant during a life on the seas just as much as water. "I think we're in the Calm Belt."

It would explain the fact that there was no wind. It would explain why I couldn't feel us moving. And it would explain why I was feeling the urge to jump off the ship and paddle us out of here _now_.

For a moment, nobody said anything. In that moment, I was reminded that Nami was the only one who actually knew what he Calm Belts were.

"...Shit," came her tired voice. I hadn't been expecting tired as I battled my way back to my feet, but my expectations obviously weren't something today was overtly worried with, so I would have to get over it.

"Where's the rope?" I stumbled towards Luffy's Special Seat, dodging around Sanji as he drew back to retrieve another bandage. The stairs were a daunting prospect, so I stopped there and held out a hand for somebody to drop a rope into. "We need to go, now."

"We're taking on water." Sanji glanced up at me through his fringe and shook his head, before returning to nursing Nami's injury. It actually looked ever worse now that I was this close; I really wanted someone to tell me right now that I wasn't actually looking at her skull. "The bottom of the ship has been ruined. If you try to tow us, you might pull it apart entirely."

"What's so bad about the-"

I quickly pointed at Luffy, even as I made my way through the carnage to find a more appropriate place to collapse. "Don't you dare finish that sentence," I warned him, not at all willing to deal with _that_ particular universal law right now.

There was a short silence as my knees buckled and I fell into a comfortable little divot that had been made into Merry's deck. In that short silence, I hope everyone was using their brains to try to think of a way out of this situation, because that's what I was doing and I had a sneaking suspicion that I wouldn't be able to do it alone.

My ignorance of boats and all they stood for was more apparent to me now more than ever. I strained my mind, fractured as it may have been, for some sort of solution. Short of patching everything and clearing the water from the ship in the time we had before we either sank or were eaten by Sea Kings, I had nothing.

I ran a tired hand through my hair and closed my eyes, shifting from my side to my back. My mind calmed for a moment, and for that moment I just listened to everyone as they breathed. Occasionally there would be a whimper from either Nami or Usopp, with Sanji's constant string of reassurances the ocean's undertone. Something thumped against the ground above me, but given the current state of the ship, I paid it no mind.

"Fixing a ship, fixing a ship…" I muttered to myself, furrowing my eyebrows in thought. There must have been something that I could use, surely? "How to fix a ship…"

Something tapped against my hand. Something cool, a salve for my rushing thoughts. Existential dread filled my heart as my eyes snapped open and I shot into a sitting position, my hand reaching for the Fruit automatically before my mind could catch up.

I didn't really care where it had come from, or what it had reincarnated within. It sat there on the deck with innocence I knew for a fact it didn't deserve, all nice and shiny in the sunlight as my fingers twitched above it.

I was frozen there for at least five seconds. The others were looking at me, probably alarmed by my sudden movement, but I paid them no mind as I picked up the Fruit and carefully looked it over.

There wasn't even a speck of dust on its skin.

This could only end poorly.

"...If I eat this - _IF_ I eat this…" I turned to the sky, where I knew at least one thing was watching me, "will I be able to put this ship back together?"

I waited for a moment, the Fruit in my hands, so easy to crush. I hated it, I hated myself for even considering this, but what if this was our only chance?

We were dead in the water. And I'd read at least one story before when the Going Merry was rescued by a Devil Fruit.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a most peculiar sight. There hadn't been any clouds in sight up until that point, with no wind to blow them overhead, but I could already make out the word as I craned my neck to see what was floating above us all.

 ** _Yes._**

"How?" I challenged, holding the Fruit aloft. I felt foolish, staring at a cloud for so long, but it never changed. I let myself watch it for a moment, determined to notice any change at all, before the time constraint got to be too much.

My eyes fell to the Fruit as I lowered the hand holding it into my lap. Did I _want_ to do this? No. Did I _have_ to do this?

...Maybe.

"Hey, Luffy." It was unnatural, the way everything around us was so still. There was nothing to distract myself with. "Did I ever tell you my dream?"

I glanced up at Luffy, and couldn't help but smile at the sight of him utterly failing to until himself from the rigging. In fact, I think he'd only made it worse.

"Nope," he grunted as he wrestled with a particularly stubborn knot, before giving up and hanging limply above my head. He turned to me and shot me a grin, albeit one that looked a little more tired than usual. "What is it?"

I couldn't help but grin up at him as I went over my words. The image in my mind was grotesque, momentous, and wearing an obnoxious crown. I brought my hand to my mouth, resting my lips against the Devil Fruit.

Last chance to turn back…

"Zheekeehihihihi!" I laughed, long and loud, around the Fruit. "My dream, my ambition; Hell, my destiny... is to make every single species of dolphins extinct!"

With that, I bit down, and felt the power flood through my body.


	11. Unknown, Uninterrupted, Unleashed

**A/N:** Given that my editor is currently busy, this chapter is pending edits. Given how quickly I type on a regular basis... well, I'm pretty sure it's readable.

* * *

My first thought after that initial bite was, 'This better not be a fucking Dolphin Zoan.'

The second was, 'Huh, this isn't actually too bad.'

And indeed, it wasn't, and that wasn't what I had been expecting.

Even with the amount of time I'd dedicated to the canon series of One Piece at an astoundingly low mark, I'd seen enough from both scenes in the anime and fanfiction using what they could from canon to know that Devil Fruits were supposed to taste absolutely awful. I mean, it felt like a regular tomato between my teeth, from the taste to the texture, and it took me a moment to get over the fact that I even _could_ taste it realise that it didn't exactly taste all that _bad_.

It was just like an overly-sweetened tomato. Granted (and apologies to any tomato lovers out there), that was already disgusting enough, but I was expecting something on the level of rotting rubbish. Death and destruction, not one component of a fucking _salad_.

I couldn't help but feel that I was a cosmic joke, and this was supposed to be a punchline. Well, fuck the universe, I was going to enjoy this little reprieve for all it was worth.

I glanced around the ship and surrounding water as I shoved the rest of the Fruit into my mouth, and had to blink. Everything was… too _clear_. The ripples on the water that shouldn't have been there in this unnatural calm were now obvious to me. I could see all damage to the ship, and as soon as I concentrated on one piece of shattered wood, I could see _through_ it and out the ruptured hull on the other side.

Blinking at the sudden clarity hitting my eyes and confusing my brain, I tried to wipe at my eyes, only for my hand to come into contact with something… there. My hand went through it like it was a liquid, but it felt like it was solid. The best comparison I could think of was that wet cement I'd stuck my hand into when I was eight and somehow even dumber than now.

I pulled back a little, before rolling my eyes at my own hesitation and moving back to inspect it. My fingers traced along the rectangular edges, dipping slightly as I got to the bridge of my nose and climbing once more when I got further away. It followed along an identical line that was heading the other way, before a sharp turn brought it to rest atop the back of my ear.

"Glasses?" I blurted out, almost choking on the piece of Devil Fruit I still had in my mouth. And not just any glasses – I knew that shape. The Devil Fruit I'd been harassed into eating was my _own_ glasses that I didn't even _need_ anymore?

How was _this_ supposed to help me in pulling a ship back together?

I stewed in my indignation for a moment, still staring at the damage to the ship, before turning to the nearest person with a question on my lips. Maybe this was some sort of riddle or reference to a local legend that I, as a foreigner, didn't have the answer to. It was a better bet than staring out into the water and cataloguing the microscopic vibrations as proof that logic wasn't entirely dead.

Luffy tilted his head to the side as all the air I'd gathered came out of my mouth in an undignified raspberry. I think his lips were moving, but I was too busy staring at the _details_ to hear what he was saying.

The world around us had faded into a monotone gray-bordering on black in the time it had taken me to turn around. I could see a light outline of Luffy's body, along with everyone else within sight, but what caught my attention was what was _inside_ that outline.

It wasn't bone or muscles or anything else you'd expect to find on an anatomically correct model. My eyes were drawn to his stomach, to the vague depiction of fangs and horns that I could make out there, so disembodied that it looked like smoke and certainly could not have possibly just _winked_ at me. It stretched, legitimately _stretched_ what could have been an arm above it, and I followed with the sort of dumb compliance of someone who wasn't feeling up to thinking for themselves. Right above it was a sort of red orb, shining bright, with masses of tendrils shooting out in tandem with what could have been Luffy's heartbeat, erratic as it was.

The others behind him were much the same, minus the shade in their gut. The outline with three sheathes and one sword had a green orb, while the outline wearing dress shoes had a yellow orb. Both shone with the same intensity as what I had seen in Luffy, though the strands leaving it to travel around their bodies were far less abundant. Behind Zoro stood Usopp; I could tell because of the rather expressive hair, and while his dark green orb was smaller than the one inside of the swordsman he was hiding behind, it was shooting out at a rate that exceeded Luffy's by a fair amount.

In comparison, Nami's orange ball was rather tame, only separating itself with every breath. Most of the tendrils leaving it were travelling right up to the side of her head, where the jagged, angry red mark still lay. Johnny and Yosaku both stood off to the side, activity in their chests both low and almost the exact same shade of gray, with Johnny a few shades darker than Yosaku. In the muted world I was viewing, they were borderline impossible to see beyond their physical presence.

Poor guys.

"CASKET!" Luffy shouted directly in my ear. With a start, I fell over sideways, the world reverting back to its normal colours and shades on the way down. I crashed onto the deck, the wood groaning under my sudden weight, and I felt the glasses get knocked off my face.

As soon as they no longer had contact with my skin, they shattered, the pieces getting smaller and smaller until there was nothing left of them but my memory.

"Ah! I broke them!" Luffy leapt back, scrambling away from where the glasses, my glasses, had disappeared. The others were huddling up around me, concern on Usopp and Nami's faces, intrigue on Zoro, Johnny, and Yosaku's, and something I couldn't identify on Sanji's. Anticipation, maybe?

"Sorry, sorry!" I waved Luffy and his frantic apologies off absently, pushing myself up until I was sitting slouched against the wall beside where the mast had broken through. My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts, going back over what exactly had happened in those few seconds that I'd been experiencing my Devil Fruit. The bright orange of Nami, the hectic emerald activity inside of Usopp, the elegant yellow of Sanji, the wild lime green of Zoro, the rush of red inside of Luffy, sitting atop a fanged and horned _shade_ that had stretched in an attempt to _show_ me something…

"Holy fuck." I breathed out in awe, too blown away to remember the distain that had fuelled me for so long. I mean, don't get me wrong I still hated whatever had brought me here with all my being, but _holy_ _ **fuck**_.

The crew and guests all took a collective step back as I leapt to my feet, pawing and jabbing at my own face in an attempt to reclaim that clarity. "I could see everything so clearly," I explained, in response to the questioning stares I was receiving. "I could see everything so clearly, and then I looked at Luffy, and I think I saw his _soul_."

I paused for a moment, then shrugged. "And also possibly his Devil Fruit, but don't quote me on that."

"Soul?" That came from Zoro, whose eyebrow had been steadily climbing higher throughout my explanation.

"Devil Fruit?" Sanji followed up, mirroring Zoro's expression so well that it would probably end up a homicide if I tried pointing it out.

"Yeah, maybe. You all had one, but Luffy was the only one who had something else in there." I tapped at a spot on my forehead, glanced around, and then tapped at another spot on my forehead. "I could see everything so fucking well, it was insane."

My forehead did nothing for me, so I closed my eyes and thought really hard about what I wanted. "Now how the fuck do I get them back?" I pondered, trying to concentrate on that sensation of being able to see so clearly for the first time in my life, so soon after finally not having to wear glasses at all.

"…Try putting them on?" My eyes snapped open at Yosaku's voice, just in time to watch him mime sliding a pair of glasses onto his face. He looked somewhat unsure at the suggestion, and the expression only worsened as I slowly, silently approached him and lay an arm on his shoulder.

"Yosaku…" I began, pushing myself away from him so I could hold his closer shoulder with one hand and pat his other shoulder with my free hand, "…compared to me, you may be a genius."

Of course, that wasn't saying much. I gave his shoulder one last pat, before taking a step back and raising my hands to my face.

The world sharpened around me as I moved my hands past my face and settled them around my ears. The sea, which had once been so still, came alive again with those tiny ripples and things moved so far below the surface that nobody on board could feel it. The damage became so much more extensive than the already catastrophic first glance would suggest, but that wasn't what I was looking for.

I had a hunch, and I looked high and low for that hunch, but I couldn't see it. It was there, _she_ was there, this was the only idea I had to help in this situation, but I couldn't see her anywhere.

"Did anything happen to the glasses while I was wearing them?" I looked over the crew, my vision so sharp I could see every minute twitch in their muscles, but I still couldn't _see_ them.

Luffy opened his mouth again, and my eyes twitched down to him. Right past his face, into his mouth, and down- pull back, PULL BACK!

"They turned black and got a little bigger." He pointed at my hand as I reeled back and tried to scrub my brain clean of that image. Don't hurl, you've been to the depths of the internet before, stay strong-! "Same colour as your finger, actually."

I took a fortifying breath as Luffy finally closed his lips, and silently promised myself to never look into his mouth again. There had been so much… but how could rubber explain that… was that an _eyeball-_

I gave myself a swift slap across the face, resolutely _not_ looking anywhere near my Captain of the moment, and pondered my Haki for a moment. The part of me that liked to lay claims to intelligence was telling me that the answer lay there, and the rest of me was calling that part a fucking idiot, mainly due to the fatc that I'd had to eat the Devil Fruit in the first place because of dolphins.

Alright, focus. Go over the facts that you knew to be true.

I had a pair of glasses as a Demon-given gift. They resembled a normal pair of glasses and gave me enhanced vision, and then apparently turned into sunglasses when shit got all funkadelic. I needed them to transform, and concentrating on what I wanted had no effect. Physical movement was required for me to get even this far-

I froze, still staring down at my finger. Out there, among the waters of the Calm Belt, I was one with the absolutely motionless ambience of nature as the fact that I was in an _anime_ clicked in my mind.

...Mother _fucker_.

With a suffering sigh, I tilted my head back and brought my hand up, splaying my fingers and pushing at the bridge of my nose with my index finger. The world flashed, because somehow this series of events needed to get even _more_ stereotypical, and all colour was sucked away in favour of a dreary night sky illuminated only with the occasional star.

I pulled my hand back, taking note of the pale outline separating it from the murky monochrome of the rest of the world, and took another look at my finger. The outline didn't touch it, instead leaving it a pitch black darker than anything around me. It didn't even look like a reflection of something, more along the lines of an utter _lack_ of colour.

Hmm.

"Alright, I've got an ide-" My voice sputtered out when I noticed something from the corner of my eye. Craning my neck to look around Luffy's head, I saw it, a tiny blotch of pure white flickering in and out of existence atop the figurehead, almost lying over where the sail was draped.

It shifted, ever so slightly towards the edge of the figurehead, and I was already moving before I even realised it. I twisted around Luffy, leapt over Zoro, Usopp, and the stairs leading up to the figurehead in one bound, and dove for the flickering shape just as it rolled off the edge of the figurehead and fell towards the water.

Several things happened in that moment.

As soon as the shape lost contact with the figurehead, the Going Merry groaned as something below snapped. A rubber limb wrapped around my midsection as I threw myself clear off the ship and hugged the shape close to my chest, and as soon as I made contact, the fractured railing I'd jumped over in my bid to catch the shape fused back together. I know because I heard it happen, and as I was hauled back on board, I saw the result of it. The point that had been broken before was the same colour as my finger.

Liiiightbulb.

The journey back down to the deck was an exercise of keeping the tiny human shape in my arms out of harm's way. As we were dragged I could see more of my colour spreading over the ship, and the places with minimal damage and all necessary wood in the vicinity were soon pulling themselves back together.

I pulled myself out of Luffy's grip just as we reached the edge of the stairs, vaulting down them when it became apparent I wasn't going to be able to shed enough momentum and landing on my feet. Looking down, I could see a tiny white hand wrapped around my Haki, and through the eyes that had been granted to me by a Devil, I could see the Haki slowly leaving my finger and entering that tiny hand, gradually brightening until it was the same pure white as the shape in my arms.

The shape stopped flickering. I reached up with my Haki-free hand and pushed at the bridge of my nose, just as someone in front of me drew in a sharp breath. The world exploded into colour once again, and I took that chance to actually look down at the infant-sized person that I'd almost fallen overboard to catch.

Their entire body was covered in a yellow raincoat, with the boots on their feet the only thing things visible from underneath it. A tiny hammer was gripped in the hand that wasn't clutching at my finger. Carefully, I maneuvered my captured hand up until I could push the hood of the raincoat back a little bit, catching sight of a tuft of white and two nubs that couldn't really be called horns just yet.

"Lucas…" I turned to Johnny and raised an eyebrow; was this the first time he'd ever spoken to me beyond threats on my life? He was holding his sunglasses above his eyes and squinting at the child in my arms, squinting to the point that I was wondering if they were prescription lenses and he wasn't just wearing them to look cool, "...where did you get a baby from?"

"The baby was always here." At everyone's blank looks, which may I say was scarily coordinated, I shrugged as best I could with my arms full. Holding a child is difficult, you know. "Do you know what a Klabautermann is?"

The spirit of the Going Merry hiccuped in my arms. For a moment, just for a moment, she disappeared.

 _Creeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaa-SNAP_

"I'll tell you later!" I sank to the ground as quickly as I could, just in case something else happened and I dropped the infant. Nudging at the bridge of my nose with my knuckle, the world shifted colour palettes once again, and the Going Merry reappeared in my arms.

"Go and plug the holes beneath the ship. Don't worry about holding it there, just get some wood or metal or something into position and I'll do the rest." I shifted around until I was sitting cross-legged on a part of the deck that wasn't damaged, and glared up at surrounding flares of light regardless of whether they could see it through the glasses or not. "What are you waiting for, a please? GO!"

Merry coughed, giving a cry that sounded more like a bleat. That seemed to snap everyone out of their reveries, and I lowered my head to a flurry of activity.

Time to force myself to learn about Haki.

 **XxX**

I think I once said before that Haki was like a muscle, in need of exercising in order to get more powerful.

I was wrong. Not entirely, but I was still wrong.

Maybe if I was someone else, someone born into this role of Haki adapt, I would be correct in my assumption. But being here now, as someone with both no pre-existing idea and possibly the only tool in existence capable of allowing me to cheat the system, I could safely say that I had been wrong before.

Haki wasn't like a muscle.

Haki was like a river. Or an ocean, or some other body of liquid that moved and flowed.

I could watch and possibly be the only person to see as the Haki in my body circulated around the single point available to it. The rest of my body had that outline apparent to it, but the single digit that was saturated in Haki was almost invisible to my sight. All I could see of it was a swirl of no colour, but I could _see the swirl_.

See the swirl. _Be_ the swirl.

At some point in time, Merry had fallen asleep in my lap, not that I could really blame her. Could spirits of ships feel pain? I was leaning towards yes just because of the fact that ships could have spirits, and Merry had gotten pretty torn up. I didn't know the extent of the damage beyond what I could see from the deck, because in all honesty, I didn't want to look.

All I knew was that whatever Haki she was siphoning off me, I wasn't losing. I'd gotten as good a look at my chest as I could, and while I could see the shadow near my stomach that was wearing a sweet pair of shades, I couldn't make out any orb. That, more than anything, convinced me that what I looking at in the others were souls.

It was either that, or some other sort of living person/dead person segregation.

That wasn't the point though. From what I could tell from the series, Haki was willpower; a person's spirit brought to the surface and weaponised.

Spirit, soul, they were interchangeable, as far as I was concerned. The point was that I didn't have one on or in me, but I still had Haki. Haki that didn't come from spirit, and thus wasn't running out without something to power it.

For the first time in recent memory, I was excited. This was _broken_ , completely unfair in its potential. The only things keeping the smile from my face were the sleeping pseudo-kid in my lap, and the fact that for all my pondering of muscles and oceans and lakes and swirls, I couldn't actually get my Haki to travel anywhere else in my body.

I was trying, oh I was trying my very best. The other guys on the ship had been running wild in the five minutes since I'd likely overstepped my bounds and ordered them to, leaving me along with my thoughts and a strangely silent Nami. She'd been ordered off work by Sanji, due to the state of her head, and she'd had no other choice but to do as she'd been told after Luffy agreed with him. I'm not really sure what she was doing, I was too busy staring down at my hands and wondering why thinking was never the answer.

The Haki stubbornly remained where it was, no matter how hard I tried to make it move. I grit my teeth, I glared, I strained my brain until I was sure something had popped and then reformed, and yet nothing.

Outwardly, I grunted. Inwardly, I was screaming bloody murder.

 _What, is it because you were just given to me? Is it because you're not really mine in the first place?_ I would have shaken my hand, but there was no chance in Hell I was risking that while my finger was still being gripped. _Like it or not, you're stuck with me now, and you will be for at least three years. SO MOVE YOUR FUCKING ASS BEFORE I CUT YOU OFF AND LEAVE YOU AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FUCKING OCEAN!_

I think something clicked, I was too busy with my own thoughts to hear it correctly. Seething, I almost didn't notice when it began, but Merry shifting in my grip broke my intense stare to the point where I was actually able to see what was happening.

The Haki was still being siphoned off into Merry's tiny spirit body, that hadn't stopped. I also didn't really know why it had started in the first place, but I wasn't about to complain. Instead of heading in that one direction, however, I could see the currents of Haki subtly shifting, the currents hitting the edge of my knuckle with a bit more force than before and slowly, ever so slowly spreading.

Kind of like a river carving through land.

I gave an exhilarated, breathy little laugh as I watched it happen; so slow it almost wasn't happening at all, but it was happening. It was only at the last moment that I remembered to keep my volume down, so my exhilarated, breathy little laugh sounded more like a choke than anything else.

"You alright?"

I glanced up at Nami's voice, looking at her outline for all of a moment before it became apparent that I wouldn't have the focus required to do this. With a mental command to my Haki to keep spreading until it was completely covering up to my elbow, I nudged at my glasses with my spare hand, closing my eyes briefly as colour returned. It got kind of nauseating after a while.

"I should be asking you that," I shrugged and opened my eyes, acclimating myself with the outside world once again. A quick scan of the deck told me that most of the superficial damage was gone, and the fact that we were still floating could only mean good things were happening below deck.

Nami waved her hand a little, and then winced. The movement parted her hair slightly, giving me a clearer view of the side of her head. The bandages that were wrapped around her injury were already red, and a small rivulet of blood was running behind her ear where there hadn't been enough cloth left to cover it all properly. I can only assume Zoro had taken most of it.

"It looks a lot worse than it actually feels," she was still wincing as she said it, and I couldn't really tell if she was lying or not. It _looked_ fucking awful.

"I'm sorry." Nami scoffed and I shifted around, partly so I would be facing her and partly so I could take some weight off my leg and finally let the bone settle back into its proper place. "I am. That," I jutted my chin towards her, "is ultimately my fault."

"You accidentally shot a dolphin." I opened my mouth, though Nami cut me off before I could even realise that I had nothing to say. "It's not your fault that a dolphin jumped into your arrow, and it isn't your fault that some intelligent sea monster is blaming you. If you'd shot that dolphin on purpose, I would have charged you for my medical bills and kept you in debt for the rest of your life."

Nami shrugged, and then winced again when that apparently irritated her wound.

"Nobody else was hurt. It's just bad luck, and I can't blame you for that." She glanced out over the ocean, the terrifyingly still ocean filled with more monsters that probably should have come up to eat us by now. "You already know it isn't the worst luck I've had."

"We'll win," I found myself saying with the type of resolve I didn't usually feel. The resolve to help another person, rather than tear apart the world around them. "I know we'll win."

Nami shot me a look from the corner of her eye. I could almost see the way the thoughts were lining up in her head through that single pupil, but soon enough it was gone, taking that comprehension away with it.

"We all want answers, you know." I did know that, but I remained silent. There was more to it than just that, otherwise Nami wouldn't have bothered saying anything. To pass the time, I looked down at Merry's face and watched as she breathed, still visible to all and still gripping my finger like the lifeline it had turned out to be.

Eventually, Nami cleared her throat, and I looked back up to meet her eyes.

"We all want to ask you questions." She said it like it was obvious, and it really was. I nodded, not really sure if that was an invitation to continue or for questions, but Nami took it as the former. "There's a lot of things we want to ask you, but we don't know how to say anything so we'll actually get answers."

I huffed out a short laugh, and looked back down to the ease in Merry's expression as Nami raised an eyebrow.

"Nami, I'm dead." I glanced up at her through my eyelashes, flashed a quick grin, and turned to the side of the boat. The Calm Belt was there to greet me, and at any second, I was expecting something massive to emerge from the picturesque carpet of water. "That's all I can tell you for certain; my heart isn't beating and there's no blood in my veins. I don't really know what gave me the Devil Fruit I just ate. I don't know why I'm here, and I'm not even sure if the life I've lead up to this point is real."

I focused on one particular ripple as it travelled further away from us, closer towards the horizon. Maybe it would make it out of the Calm Belt and become a wave. I had faith in that ripple.

"All of this; me talking to you, this Haki on my finger, this hopeless task I've been given by what could have been my imagination… all of it feels like a story I would have written before I came here. But at the same time, did I really come here?" From the corner of my eye, I saw Nami open her mouth, and I cut her off with another chuckle. "You can say that you're real all you want, but I've been living with my imagination claiming itself to be real for as long as I can remember. And maybe my memory is just particularly bad, or maybe I'm lying to you and myself, but I can't give you answers when I don't even know them myself."

The ripple was gone from my sight. Silently, I wished it well, before turning around to face Nami fully.

"We'll win," I told her, not quite able to suppress my smile by that point. "I know we'll win."

She stared at me. Her eyes moved over my face, tracing my smile and moving along the rims of the glasses I was wearing, before a similar smile spread across her face. I doubt she was happy with what I'd said, but at least for now, she was going to drop it.

Carefully, I lifted the little spirit in my arms and unfolded my legs, dropping back slowly until I was lying down on the deck with Merry strewn across my stomach. I sighed up at the sky, no clouds in sight for me to stare at, and was halfway to closing my eyes when Nami's face poked into my vision.

A drop of blood hit the deck next to my head, but I didn't say anything.

"I do have one question," she confessed. I tilted my head to the side as effectively as I could, and gave her a little nod.

"You just ate a Devil Fruit, and you were the one pulling the boat. How are we going to get out of here and then get home on time?"

I blinked up at her slowly, twice, as Merry snorted and tried to burrow herself deeper into my gut.

And then I grinned.


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:** My hands are melting from the amount I typed yesterday.

In case you were wondering, it's a few minutes past midnight.

* * *

Once the crew plus two had finally reassembled on the deck, and we'd been given the green light by the closest person we had to a shipwright, I began my brief presentation.

"Right, so as I was saying before being so rudely interrupted-"

The little spirit I was holding in my arms twisted around to blow a raspberry in my face. I responded by chucking her into the air, catching her under the shoulders, and turning her to face the crew.

"This," I shook her around a little bit to emphasise my point, smiling a little despite myself as she giggled and tried to squirm out of my grip, "this is a Klabautermann. I'm not sure of the specifics, but they're born either when a boat continuously feels intense love or when it feels intensely loved."

The childish spirit waved at the crew enthusiastically, happy to show off her new motor skills. She'd been steadily growing as more repairs had been finished and her incorporeal body had been more and more inundated with my Haki. I hadn't noticed it at first, but where there had once been something that resembled a newborn baby, now there was a little girl who likely still wouldn't reach my waist if we were to stand side by side, but she would be _close_.

The results of her appearance were honestly pretty typical. Nami had a small smile on her face and Usopp looked like he'd just been slapped across the face with a fish, and I stopped paying attention after that.

Just hand over some exposition until it got to the point where we could get the fuck out of here, get us the fuck out of here, and then figure out a way off the ship for good.

That was the plan. Simple, really.

"I'll admit, I wasn't expecting to see her so soon, but this sort of shit happens all the time on the Grand Line." I shrugged and tucked Merry securely under my elbow, so she was hanging from my hip on the opposite side of my one remaining arrow. Huh, that reminded me; where was my bow?

It hadn't been on the deck, and if it was somehow down below, nobody had thought to bring it with them. Did that mean it had fallen overboard? I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it had fallen overboard during our journey into the Calm Belt.

Damn. That bow and I had been through a lot together. Though I would rather lose that than something like Krieg's body. After all that I had gone through to get him... come to think of it, was he still on board?

...I would have to check that the second I got some free time.

"This," I shook off the melancholy ache of losing a treasured companion and held up my finger like I was about to give a lecture… wait. "This is something called Haki. By the time you get to the New World, it'll be everywhere." I opened and closed my hand, testing the way the muscles felt now that they were drenched in Haki. As per my demands, the spiritual energy had climbed all the way up to my elbow, though it had continued on and gotten halfway up my bicep before I noticed.

So the soul energy that had been grafted onto my borrowed body was rebelling against me, eh? Can't say I'm all that surprised.

"There are three types of Haki, that I know of, and everybody on board this ship is capable of at least two of them." I frowned down at my arm momentarily, before ordering the Haki to spread until it was halfway across my chest. Both because I had a plan, and because it seemed to bet getting faster while travelling to portions of my body that it had been to before and that could only be a good thing.

"I've seen you knock bullets out of the air with that." Glancing up at Zoro, I was greeted with a familiar frown and a pair of crossed, bandaged arms. "Can you teach us?"

"Nope." He blinked at me, and for one of the first times in recent memory, I chose to elaborate rather than attempt to piss someone off further. "I was born… yeah, born with it like this. I have no idea how to unlock it, and I don't know how to use anything other than Armament. Hell, I'm only just beginning to figure that shit out."

A tiny hammer hit me in the chin. I looked down at Merry, having genuinely forgotten for a second that she was even there, before rolling my eyes at her pout and setting her on the ground. Almost immediately, she was in among the Straw Hats, poking at their thighs and prodding whatever weapon she could reach.

I didn't even want to _think_ about what that entailed.

"I'll help you however I can when we get some free time, but right now we need to get out of here." I gave the crew a wry grin and peeled my shirt off, mostly because I also didn't know where my jacket was and I didn't want to somehow lose that as well. "The Calm Belts are notorious for being where Sea Kings go to breed, after all. Kind of surprised we don't have company yet."

They all looked at me dumbly for a moment, except for Nami, who stared in horror like she had just remembered a thousand-word essay that was due in fifteen minutes. I looked back at the others just as dumbly; did they not know what Sea Kings were, or were they just not at all bothered by it?

"Sea Kings?" Usopp repeated slowly, Merry in his arms and poking at his nose. Ah, of course.

My expression morphed into a smirk as I enjoyed the look of confusion on his face for a second longer, knowing just what it would turn into as soon as I opened my mouth, but something made me pause. Just for a moment, I could have sworn that I'd needed to readjust my footing to keep from stumbling.

It was instinct at this point, having been out on the ocean for so long and even worked in a busy restaurant atop the waves, but you only needed to do that when…

...Bugger.

I pushed at the bridge of my nose with a Haki-free finger with as much nonchalance as possible. My glasses burst into existence around my eyes, and with the feigned disinterest of staring at a boring cloud floating across the sky, I glanced over the edge of the boat.

Ripples. And not just any ripples, bigger ripples than before. And they were only growing in size.

Yeah, well, you know what, Murphy? You can take your fucking Law with you when you go choke on the fattest dick in the universe and die the death you deserve. Nobody likes you.

The first wave hit the boat. I looked back at the crew, and gave Nami the most defeated expression I could possibly muster. I'm not sure if the others noticed it or not, though I did see Merry fade from normal view and, presumably, return fully to the boat. Maybe, I don't really know how it all worked.

 _Sorry_ , I muttered in response to the silent question I could see written all over Nami's face, and that was when we were moving.

Oh, silly me, did I say moving? What I meant to say was _AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-_

There was no other way to explain it. One moment we were sitting on a ocean that was losing a battle of movement against a toddler's bath water, and the next we were way too close to the clouds, staring down at a cylindric body that would have taken upwards of an hour to run along. Maybe less, I'm not sure.

It was difficult to see in its entirety, not dolphin monster big by any stretch of the imagination, but standing on our little East Blue boat it was enormous. For the second time in as many hours, I was left staring at something that made me feel like I wasn't anything at all, because how can something grow that big and manage to support its own weight!?

I caught motion at the very corner of my vision. Usopp had just taken a deep breath. The wild look in his eyes made it obvious what he was about to do, but our current position smack-dab in the middle of the leviathan's forehead had us sitting right in between its only source of sight.

 _Its dopey, useless gecko eye placement meant it wasn't able to see us_.

"Usopp." It was remarkably silent, this high up in the sky. Come to think of it, shouldn't there have been more than one Sea King milling around us?

Oh well, maybe they were all too busy propagating the next generation. If they were fucking each other, they wouldn't fuck us.

"If you make a single. _Fucking._ Noise," I continued in a breathless tone, trying to convey the sheer magnitude of the emotions I was feeling while attempting to remain as quiet as possible. It wasn't easy, "or if you do anything at all that ends up making my Devil Fruit useless and thus defeats the entire point of me eating it, such as spooking the Sea King with a loud noise and dumping us all in the ocean, I swear to you-"

I paused for a quick breath, because I'd run out of air, and continued as though I hadn't interrupted myself.

"I swear to you that I will overcome the universal Devil Fruit weakness through the sheer power of my anger, search the ocean floor until I find your body, dig you a shallow tomb in the bedrock with my bare fucking hands, dump your disintegrating bones in after however many years it takes me, cover your bitch face up so nobody ever has a chance of finding you, and _piss on your fucking grave_."

Slowly, oh so slowly, I turned to look him dead in the eye, my neck muscles straining to accommodate the movement. If Usopp's face lost any more colour, it would become transparent.

Come on man, pull it together. This wasn't even the most fucked up shit we'd seen _today_.

Everyone else was looking at me once again. I pretended not to notice the approval in Zoro's expression because he was a fucking lunatic at the best of times, and dropped silently to the deck of the boat, pushing at my glasses with the hand that was coated in Haki.

"Anybody have any other ideas?" I whispered to the other outlines. The Sea King below us was just a massive blotch of somewhat light gray; if it had a soul, I wasn't in position to see it.

Getting a unanimous head shake in response, I crossed my legs, resting my elbows on my knees with a deep frown.

"Guess that's my cue. Try not to move, try not to talk, don't even fucking breathe too loud. It may have spotted us from underwater, but now it doesn't know where we are. Chances are it's so large that the ship's weight doesn't even register."

I tried looking at its head to get an idea of how large the brain was in comparison, but there were no obvious clues. The head we were atop was slowly swivelling from side to side, so it was either losing the fight against gravity, or it was clever enough to scan its surroundings for evidence of our existence.

Fuck me sideways, I didn't know which one was scarier. I mean, I wouldn't die, but I didn't want to sit on the bottom of the ocean for three years!

"Hopefully it'll go back into the water slowly and when we get down, we won't have to worry about anything but speed." I glanced down at my chest; the Haki was still spreading. I began to push it in every which direction as I spoke, actually seeing another layer begin to rise from my palm as I began to pool as much as I could in my grip. "When we hit water, I'll coat Merry with Haki. Anybody see which way we came in?"

A rustle of cloth that had my ass clenching later, and Sanji was pointing behind himself, slightly to the left. Port, starboard; don't know don't care. Left.

"Great." With a tired smile, I revealed my master plan. "Assuming the Haki doesn't outright sink her, which I don't think will happen but you never know, I'll punch us out of here."

"...Punch?" Luffy, Zoro, Johnny, and Yosaku all repeated, some of them louder than others. I think Usopp was still in shock, Nami was shaking her head, and Sanji had turned away entirely, a cigarette in his mouth and a million regrets likely on his mind.

"Punch." I nodded, brandishing a fist for emphasis. The Haki I'd gathered suffused back over my hand, and through my shades, I could make out the physical bump that denoted its existence.

In time, I'm sure I could come to hate this Fruit even more, because I couldn't stop myself from loving it. My life is pain, yadda yadda yadda.

"We've got however long it takes before this thing loses interest." Crawling wasn't the most dignified of exit strategies, but I'd made my bed when I chose to sit down, and now I was going to lie in it. "If anybody needs me, I'll be working towards actually making sure I don't accidentally murder you all horrifically."

Getting up the stairs without either getting to my hands and knees or giving us away was difficult, but I managed. With a final ninja roll, I disappeared through the still-empty doorway to the galley, only coming to a stop after making it underneath the table.

 _Class_.

 **XxX**

Alright, so the plan to distance myself from the Straw Hats and allow their adventures to continue uninhibited wasn't going all too great.

I entirely blamed the little spirit that would now _not_ leave me be.

"I still don't understand how you came to be so quickly," I muttered to her as I lightly tapped my fingers against the palm she was holding up, siphoning out the Haki I'd gathered to do whatever it was that she was doing with it.

Originally, I'd been hiding out under the table and pulling at the Haki until it was standing half a foot off my hand, before mashing it all back down. With my vision, I could see that it actually wasn't being reabsorbed into my body, it was being compressed and layered down on top of the Haki already there. Some of it seeped in through the cracks left in and on my skin, and that was only to fill in the places that had been left open. They couldn't have been more than microscopic in size.

Whatever my supply was, it wasn't infinite.

But _damn it all_ if I wasn't going to make it big enough to not matter. Why? Because I can, mainly; this was a freakin' _superpower_!

...At least, that had been the _plan_ , until Merry trotted up to me silently and began to take away everything I'd managed to stockpile like a little shit. I couldn't yell at her, and I couldn't really smack her upside the head, so in the end I decided to just hand it over and try again later. I knew it was possible, I could still make progress once I got some time to myself.

I drew my fingers back, switched the arms that were keeping my top half off the ground, and waited for her to raise her other hand to repeat the gesture. Essentially, now that I'd gotten the Haki to spread all the way down to the tips of my previously untouched fingers, I was playing an even slower and more boring version of patty-cake.

Merry hesitated for a moment, her mouth tilting down. The Haki in my hand visibly coiled towards her, stretching even further from my skin in its effort to reach her. Interesting…

Slowly, Merry raised a hand to her mouth, and pantomimed taking a bite from something. I smiled at her, because she was utterly adorable, and raised my eyebrows as she pointed at me and nodded conclusively.

"Because I'm giving you something to eat?" My voice wobbled a little in the effort to keep the laughter out of it. What else would I expect from a ship being captained by Luffy?

Merry scowled at me, reaching out and flicking me on the forehead. She jabbed her finger right in my face once again, and I looked up into her coal-black eyes as they glinted down at me. Was her body getting bigger? I could swear her hood was being pulled back, and her horns were definitely more pronounced than they had been not even ten minutes ago.

"Because I ate something?" I tried again, more bemused and amused when she nodded, shot me a grin, and tapped my still-outstretched palm with her fingers. I was actually paying attention this time, so I could see her hood crawl a few millimetres back, as more of a curve made itself known on her horns.

She waved her hand in front of my face, and I automatically reached up to touch her hand to mine. This time, however, she grabbed on before I could draw back, threading her fingers in between mine and closing her eyes.

The table, benches, and floor all flickered black. I stared at the ground between us dumbly for a second, before pushing at my glasses. The amount of Haki that Merry was taking from me had increased by a ridiculous amount, and I could see that as more flowed into her and shifted to that pure glow of her body, the intensity of willpower covering our surroundings continued to grow.

A moment later, I figured out _why_ , and promptly wrapped both arms around Merry to make sure we wouldn't get separated. A moment after _that_ , we were moving.

It was gradual at first, with the only indication we were moving being the way the edges of the tablecloth were lifting ever so slightly. And then, evidently, our temporary mount got bored, because things very suddenly sped up.

The crashing of the waves below us was providing enough noise for me to be confident in standing up and hopping through the empty doorway, out into the fresh air where there wasn't a plethora of sharp objects ready to tear through either me or Merry. My feet hit the deck at the exact moment the boat hit the water, initially sinking so low that water splashed onto me from over the railing.

At least one person on board shit themselves. I'm almost certain of it. Maybe it was just a little bit, but it happened.

I held my metaphorical breath as the last of the massive sea serpent disappeared beneath the now turbulent waters. By now, only the spires on its back were visible, rapidly retreating further into water that really shouldn't have been deep enough to house it. How big was this world in comparison to mine, I had to wonder?

Buoyancy and ship design won out after that. Merry managed to stay above water, as she had been built for, and for a terrifying silent minute, all was still. Not even the Sea King's flat head had provided as much stability as the ocean now did.

"...Can I scream now?" Usopp croaked out from where he was standing, hugging the repaired mast so close that looking back, I'm kind of surprised the Haki-infused wood managed to hold up. He looked like he was in the middle of a seizure - was he even breathing?

"Yes." Did he seriously need permission? I shook my head and made my way over where Luffy was face-down against the deck. Placing Merry down beside him and sighing in relief when the Haki didn't fade from the ship's body, I snatched up my shirt from the ground nearby, shoved it over my head, picked up one of Luffy's limp arms, and began to tie it around my waist. My eyes roved over my arms as I worked; both were completely saturated down to the bone and beyond in Haki, ready for the trial run I was about to put them through.

I heard Usopp take a deep breath, before letting out an ear-piercing scream. Not at all eager to see if his lungs could summon forth more creatures from the depths, I hauled Luffy's insensate (and wet - ah) body off the deck, shoved him into Zoro's arms, and leapt off the boat in the opposite direction that Sanji had pointed out earlier.

I got maybe halfway down to the water before Luffy's arm stopped stretching. That was a brief moment of luck, perhaps not as much as it was that Merry could hold up Armament on her own and freed me from having to worry about it, but I digress. Moving quick, I raised both hands and lay them against the hull, drawing them back as carefully as possible once I had them level with one another.

I'd told everyone that I was going to punch the ship. Technically, what I was going for was more of a push, but I literally did not care about the differences.

The Haki was there to make cutting through the waves not just easy, but _possible_ without shattering Merry's underside to shit. The biggest problem was that I had no idea how much power I would need to actually get us back on track. Too little and we may not even get out of the Calm Belt, too much and who knows how long it'll take us to get back?

I needed a nice, even number…

"Nine hundred and thirty-seven percent."

Hah! Just kidding.

I looked down at my arms, watching as the Haki rushed over and through them. "One thousand percent," I said quietly, tensing my muscles harder than I ever had before.

The effect was almost instantaneous.

My bones, drenched in more Haki than anywhere else by virtue of being the lowest point it could gather, began to creak under the strain. I pushed my muscles together further, and to my disbelief, I actually saw _cracks_ beginning to appear along the edges of my bones. The Haki was fracturing from the force I was putting it under.

So there was an upper limit to what I could do, at least until I figured out how to properly direct the spiritual energy to where I needed it to be. Good to know.

My arms were a blur even to my eyes as I pushed them forward, planting them against the edge of the ship. There was a solid _whumph_ as I made contact, Haki against Haki, and for a comical moment, nothing happened.

I guess after that, the universe caught up with where I'd gotten, because then we were _moving_.

"Hope for the best!" I screamed over the howling winds, and grinned at the resounding response from on board when they all figured out that that was _exactly_ what I was doing. Giving a heads up was for people who wanted to remain on pirate ships, after all.

Ahh… getting a ship out of the Calm Belt? Devil Fruit. Pissing people off and/or scaring the ever-loving shit out of them, with little to no regard for how they will react? Priceless.

 **XxX**

"I don't fucking believe it."

Clambering back on board the ship for me had been saved until I was able to fight against the momentum. That had left me dangling over the edge of the boat as the ocean rushed by, hanging on with nothing but whatever grip I could get on the Going Merry's hull , and Luffy's arm around my waist. Thankfully, they'd both held, and once we were slowing down I was able to pull myself back up and actually try to figure out where I'd gotten us.

And, suffice it to say, I didn't fucking believe it.

I stared, as advertised, in utter disbelief as the Going Merry shed the last of her momentum, coming to a complete stop between two walls that could have been made out of brick. Right in front of us was a massive metal gate, and behind that loomed the single most horrifying monument of Nami's torturous past.

From what I could tell, we were perfectly in the middle. There was the exact same amount of empty space between both sides of the ship and the walls. If I killed a dolphin on the way over, it would be Flipper all over again.

"Arlong Park…" Nami murmured from somewhere behind me, sounding just as surprised as I was. Everyone else had gathered up around the front of the ship, along the railing I was more or less hanging over, but I was too busy wondering about the odds of the shot that I had just made. Surely it hadn't been just me, there must have been some sort of divine intervention. Surely.

"You got us to the front door. Nice shot, Shitty-" I blinked and shook my head as Sanji started talking from beside me, hopping away from the figurehead and onto the rigging from where I was standing. One quick swing and I was landing atop the brick wall to our right, looking out upon a village that could only be Cocoyashi. "...Zombie?"

I stood up straight and turned around, sweeping my hand through my hair and feeling a distinct lack of glasses on my nose. I guess that would explain why everything wasn't in ultra-high definition. You'd think I would have noticed before now. Well, you would think wrong.

"I'll see you guys later, yeah?" I gave them a quick two-fingered salute, before turning around and taking off down the wall as quickly as I could. I'd stick close to the Park no matter what, but above all else, I wanted get some distance between the crew and I, and pretending to care about this place enough to want to take in the sights was as good an excuse as I was going to get.

...It didn't feel all that good, lying to them. But this was by no means my battle. Luffy would be the one to beat Arlong and earn Nami's trust, and the others would work on the crew that had turned a blind eye to her suffering all along. There was that one octopus looking guy who would hopefully make it out alright, but I had my own problems to worry about before I could worry about his.

If I didn't start pushing the crew away _now_ , then I would be in too deep to get away. There wasn't many chances I could get while we were out at sea, and there certainly wasn't anything I could hope to do if they were _actively looking_ for answers.

If I took part in this, the first major battle since setting sail on the Going Merry, then there would be no backing out. Wasn't that how shounen usually worked? You bleed together, you die together as legends a handful of decades down the road? After being paired with someone else from the main cast and producing an ugly litter of children?

Yeah, no. I didn't have a handful of decades, and I would rather shoot my own nuts off before having children of my own.

Picking up speed as I neared where the wall met the ground proper, and pointedly ignoring the calls of my name following after me, I hopped down from the brick wall, pushing Haki into my legs with a forceful thought and nudging at the bridge of my nose with my knuckle. The colours surrounding me sharpened, and even as I increased to a full run at a silent one hundred percent, I could take in everything perfectly.

Frustratingly alike to much in the past few hours, the village was… mostly silent. I wasn't really paying all that much attention, in all honesty, but where were all the people?

Going from what little I could hear, there was a small commotion somewhere closer to the centre of the village, and soon enough, I turned a corner and was able to make out a group of people in the distance.

Largest of them all was a blue man with a nose that protruded further from his face than Usopp's. I was still too far to hear what was being said, and as I began to pass the first house on this… street? Road? Whatever this was, I took to its rooftop, hopping along and doing my best to remain as inconspicuous as possible. Hell if I knew which species of fish had superior eyesight, and if any of Arlong's crew were cross-bred with one.

...Was that racist? Oh, I don't care enough to worry about it. At least they weren't as fugly as some of the bogans back home.

Now those… _those_ were some half-humans.

I came to a stop atop one of the houses bordering the village… square, almost falling short of my final jump in a bid to stay as low as possible. Being up this high brought a bit of a thrill to my chest, but I ignored the sensation as I crawled as close to the edge as I comfortably could, taking in the scene down below.

Nobody had yet noticed me, not even the people facing my direction. There was a group of half-humans who could only have been the Fishmen, and the blue one I'd spotted at a distance was holding a man up by the neck, his webbed fingers easily circling the man's neck and his single arm sufficiently strong to keep him aloft the ground.

...Now, there was such a thing as Uncanny Valley, I knew that, but not even that could explain the clear look at Arlong's face I was getting right now. The best I could equate it to was… cultural differences.

I mean, it was all there. The eyes, nose and mouth, no matter how disturbing one was in comparison to the others. But they had all been thrown onto a canvas that I could only describe as 'nope'.

He wasn't even ugly, all things considered. He was just… a fish. A walking, talking, homicidal fish.

And around here, that was entirely normal. They were all so close to human that I honestly did believe that if I had grown up knowing they existed as something more than moving pictures, I would have been entirely alright with that. Hence, the cultural differences.

...Or was that the definition of Uncanny Valley? I didn't really know, and it wasn't like it was within my power right now to fact-check that one.

"YOUR TRIBUTE WILL SOON BECOME THE CORNERSTONE OF MY ARLONG EMPIRE, THAT WILL RULE _ALL_ OF EAST BLUE!"

Even though I was looking at the guy that said it, the sheer volume of Arlong's voice startled me for a moment. Refocusing on him, I could see the muscles in his arm flex, and over the gasps and cries of the crowd, I could hear the gurgle coming from the man's throat. There was a vaguely familiar woman with blue hair off to the side moving forward, but it was very obvious that Arlong wasn't stopping.

Holy shit, I'd gotten here right for the best part. I think I was about to witness a murder.

The other Fishmen were moving to intercept the villagers as they all suddenly surged forward as if on some silent signal. Nobody was holding any form of weapon, and not even the quiet pleas of the dying man could get them to stop.

Step by step, they got closer-

Fists were drawn back-

Everyone was shouting over one another, I would have to be _loud-_

"Zheekeehihihihi!"

Everybody froze, their heads whipping up to the rooftop I was laying on. The man stopped thrashing in Arlong's grasp as the Fishman relaxed his grip enough to let him breathe, and as I quickly checked while climbing to my feet, breathing he still was.

So, I kept laughing. I laughed long as people turned to one another and asked who I was. I laughed hard as the tension slowly began to drain from the situation, likely against all their wills.

Most importantly of all, I laughed _obnoxiously_ as Arlong turned slowly to face me, his expression stuck in a terrifying grin that would have made any other lesser man shit themselves and run.

For the record, I do consider myself the lesser man, but I was also effectively immortal so it didn't matter all that much.

All their attention was now firmly on me, human and Fishman alike. I shifted around so that my feet were dangling from the rooftop, peals of slightly hysterical laughter still bursting from me. In all honesty, nothing about this current situation was all that funny, but once I got started it could be difficult to stop.

And stupidity was always something that could set me off. Stupidity born from hubris was that much sweeter.

The grin on Arlong's face hadn't faltered in the least. If anything, it looked even wider than before, every bit the shark that was in his DNA.

"I don't recall seeing you around here before." And I have my doubts that statement was only a statement.

I took in his face for a moment, with his too-sharp teeth and his pride-and-joy nose that looked horrifically ineffective for anything not combat related, and moved on to examine the group of Fishmen that was accompanying him. What did lieutenants look like again…?

Argh, no use, I couldn't remember anything about them, beyond something to do with lips and something to do with karate. There were no unusual lips in the crowd below, just as there were no… what were those martial arts uniforms called? Something like gi? Whatever it was, there was no stereotypical uniform in the crowd. Unless that was a human invention and the Fishman in question had burned them upon discovering an intense hatred for humans.

Either way, the small sample in front of me wasn't all that worrisome, apart from the big Fishman himself. And it had just occurred to me that I'd left the Straw Hats at Arlong Park.

The fight from canon, as I had seen redone in many a fanfiction, hadn't gone all that well at first. There had been a lot of heartbreak and Luffy had fucked himself right off the bat, which had only made everything harder… maybe?

But if the main forces were separated, and I had the Captain with me right here…

I could almost hear a warbling, falsetto copy of my own voice in my head. _'Don't get involved in the fight, establish some distance, nmm nmm nmm. Nice follow-through, dickhead. You're soooo good at this.'_

God damn it, I thought the voices had stopped.

"You actually believe that, don't you?" I said in response, pointedly ignoring the 'subtle' demand that had been thrown my way. I looked down at Arlong, in both meanings of the phrase, and scoffed at him. "You actually believe you have what it takes to rule the East Blue. That's a fucking laugh, mate."

The light reflecting off of Arlong's teeth and into my eyes got a little bit brighter. I almost moved to shield my eyes, but instead I grabbed my glasses and tossed them to the side. They disintegrated into tiny, glowing shards, drawing everyone's eye for a moment and removing the glare from my own. I would have to remember that one.

"Let me give you two names." I cut Arlong off before he could say anything, because in all honesty, I wasn't particularly interested in what he had to say. "Let me give you two names- no, actually, three names, all of people who will both take issue with you trying anything with the East Blue, and who can annihilate you with a _thought_."

If Arlong was busy with me, he couldn't be busy with the others. And if I could, say, get him pissed off over a long period of time to the point of exhausting himself, well… There came a time when a pleasure became a duty.

I took out my one remaining arrow, the only little rock on a stick that had survived with me to this point, and began to check over it idly. The Haki covering my hand jumped at the opportunity, and I came very close to rolling my eyes as I let it flow out to slowly cover the arrow.

"Third on the list would be Yasopp." I don't really know why Arlong was letting me keep going on without any context. Maybe what I had to say was very interesting. "You may not have heard of him, but he's got a son and a home island here in the East Blue, and there's also the small fact that he's the sniper on Red Haired Shanks' crew."

I smirked at the gasps that followed that name, because how could I not? Of course, to be fair, I didn't know all that much about Shanks, but I knew he was friends with that barmaid from Luffy's childhood, and I also knew that he would bring his whole crew down on Arlong's head if that's what Yasopp desired.

How could I make such a bold claim? Well, because Shanks was a shounen character on the side of good!

"Of course, Numero Uno would be Garp the Fist-" My lips twitched into an enormous grin at the reaction those words had. When at first, it had been the people and some of the Fishmen gasping, now it was every Fishman within my vision blanching and losing colour. Even Arlong paled a bit. "Nah, wait. Everyone knows that Fishmen are, like, _ten times_ stronger than humans by nature, so it shouldn't be too difficult to deal with The Hero of the Marines after threatening his _grandson_ , I mean, right?"

Of course, that wasn't mentioning Ace, or Smoker, or whoever else I didn't know about from my limited exposure to the world of One Piece… speaking of Smoker, how did Arlong even get this fa-

Riiight, he'd bribed a Marine or something, hadn't he?

Arlong's eyes were being shadowed by his hat. I'm not exactly sure how, given how close his hat was to his head, but I would need to get a hat so I could replicate that effect. _Damn_ did it work to convey how _pissed off_ he was getting. The other Fishmen around him were actually beginning to back off, and the more intelligent of the civilians had already fled the scene. The man Arlong had been strangling and the blue-haired woman, I noted, were not among those who had left.

I turned the arrow in my hand, letting my Haki out to cover that side as well, and let out a dejected sigh that didn't work at all coming through the infuriating expression I was wearing.

"Maybe if you actually got off your ass and trained instead of relying on your heritage, you would be genuinely scary." I shrugged mournfully, because I actually _did_ mean that. Sure, right now Arlong was scary enough, but that was to civilians in the East Blue and to someone who'd never seen the likes of him before, and that was temporary at best. I was already getting over the effect he held the more I examined his actions.

His bounty may not have been indicative of his threat at all, but I'm pretty sure Luffy hadn't even had a bounty when he tore Arlong Park apart, and I knew he didn't have one now. And if Luffy could take on someone who had supposedly been to the Grand Line and was a Fishman, then they must have been neglecting themselves even more than that clown dipshit had been. Boggy? Bi-oh, _Buggy_.

"As it is, you've angered a force far greater than yourself." I spun the arrow around in my fingers, before using it to point at Arlong. "And I will enjoy watching you realise that."

Where before there was a hushed sort of anticipation, now there was no noise in the air at all. I chanced a glance at a few of the people down below, Fish and man. Were they… were they _not breathing?_

"...I suppose that force would be _you_ , is that right?"

In that moment, I felt a twinge of… _something_.

It started as somewhere between a tickle and a poke, spreading across my whole body before tunneling in on my chest. Icy tendrils of cold followed along in its path before they turned to liquid fire, warmer than comfortable but not quite painful. It was like an angry chihuahua was sitting on my t-shirt, barking down orders at me to bend and kiss the ground at its feet.

I frowned at the sensation and moved to push at my nose with a finger coated in Haki, but just as soon as the feeling was making itself known, it had vanished, leaving in its place nothing but the livid stare of a Fishman Captain.

Intriguing.

"...No." I answered at length, mind occupied elsewhere. "That would be Nami's true Captain. Speaking of Nami, however, nice job announcing that you were going to betray her deal with you from the very beginning."

Because it would be difficult to rule East Blue without being in charge of all, wouldn't it?

"So she betrayed me, did she? Joined another crew and sent some bounty hunter after my head?" From the sash around his waist, Arlong pulled his gun, levelling it at my head. My hand twitched on its own accord, my mind flashing back to the last time I'd had a gun pointed at me.

You know, that time that had made me almost twelve million richer.

"Not a bounty hunter." Though that could be an idea…

Arlong's eyes hardened, the glint of anger and pupil both abandoning them and leaving behind a pure, expressionless black. "I don't care," he growled, and pulled the trigger.

Haki was already moving before I had time to think about it, more on instinct than anything else, since it didn't really matter in the end. The bullet bounced off my cheek, hitting me harder than anything had before (probably a memento from the Grand Line), snapping my neck to the side.

And I do mean _snapping_.

That had fucking _hurt_ , asshole.

My frown tipped even further downward, into a definite scowl. With one hand, I reached up to snap my own neck back into position, eliciting yet more gasps from the idiots who still had not yet gotten it through their heads to run away.

"Two hundred percent."

With the other hand, I lined up my Haki coated arrow, and flicked it.

Coated in Haki, leaving my hand at two hundred percent, and being fired _off_ Haki made it the fastest arrow I'd ever shot to date. The friction of my borrowed spirit grinding against itself set it ablaze before it had even left my hand, and I watched dispassionately as it tore down towards Arlong's still raised gun.

With a guttural growl, Arlong lowered his gun and moved to knock the arrow off course. My eyes widened and my hand came up a second too late, the word on my lips before I could either make a difference or question why I was saying it in the first place.

"Stop!"

It all happened so fast.

A cord of Haki, jet black and coiled around itself like a rope, shot out of my hand towards the flying arrow, but it was moving way too slow to intercept properly. Arlong's namesake, his most precious feature, the base of his unprotected nose, right below the final 'tooth' before his face, connected with the flaming arrow with a thunderous crash.

It took a moment for my cord of Haki to attach itself to the arrow, and pull it back. Less than a _second_ , but even that was too late. The arrow was still moving as I tugged it back towards me, but now it was almost three times as heavy, and however many times more gruesome.

I was almost too shocked to look down at my lap, where the arrow had landed. I had punched a dude's head off not too long ago, _accidentally_ , and yet I was too surprised by the turn of events to look into my lap. And maybe, just a little bit, _fucking terrified_.

Arlong was staring up at me. He was surprised too, that much I could tell, but it wouldn't last. Already, his facial muscles were twitching something fierce, and were it any other person I didn't like that he was looking at, I would have laughed at their misfortune, albeit it a little guiltily.

As it was, I could only slowly look down, at the spare weight in my lap.

My arrow was there, much like I was expecting it to be.

Impaled more than halfway down was the namesake of Nami's torturer and archenemy. Said torturer and archenemy was staring up at me now, a hand slowly probing his face and tiny white pinpricks of light in his eyes.

He looked at me, actually _looked right at me_ , and I felt that chihuahua again, except now it felt like a Rottweiler tearing into my flesh with reckless abandon, for fun and vengeance and a tasty treat at the end.

... ** _Fuuuuuuuck_**.


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:** I updated the cover for this story with a selfie. That is what Casket looks like, in case you were wondering.

* * *

Slowly, I raised my hands in the universal gesture of surrender, palms out and Arlong's nose hanging off my left thumb from one of the middling serrated teeth.

"Now, let's not be too hasty-"

Arlong _roared_ , a noise that I would have expected from a wild animal, not someone who almost looked human. My muscles wanted to lock up, hours upon hours of listening to and reading urban legends making me draw similarities with this situation that I was definitely not ready to face just yet. However, remaining sitting atop that house was unfortunately not an option I had.

That was mainly because the house I was sitting atop was about to become a nonentity.

Entirely too hastily for my liking, Arlong leapt up at me, arm drawn back. I ducked underneath the punch he launched at my head, pushing away from the roof and dropping down onto the road below.

There was a tremendous crash behind me as soon as my feet hit the ground. I crouched down into a roll with the momentum I still had, probably landing far too hard on my shoulder for it to have looked cool, and glanced behind me.

The house was _gone_. Fucking _gone_. I mean, sure, there was the massive pile of crumbling wood, and the occasional discolouration of what could have been furniture at one point, but otherwise my former perch now existed in no place other than my heart.

As I watched, the largest pile of debris _exploded_ outwards, blowing away the dust that was lingering in the air around the destruction. A piece of wood smacked me in the face after I was too slow in falling to the ground, and the various cries of pain coming from behind me either told me that other people had been hit, or there had been a lot of people living in that house who were just now figuring out what had happened.

Arlong stood to his full height in the middle of his mess, veiled behind a cloud of what was hopefully asbestos. He stared down at me, and I looked over his shoulder, pushing at the bridge of my nose with my knuckle to get a better view of the flag waving in the wind some ways off.

No, wait, not a flag. A Jolly Roger.

I almost groaned, this was gonna _suck_.

"You shouldn't let your guard down if you're going to attack someone." I chided, doing my best to sound confident. It was actually easier than I thought it would be, I mused as I jabbed in Arlong's direction with the man's own schnoz. "Everybody _nose_ that."

Somebody to the left of me actually laughed at that. I could only hope that the sound of skin on skin afterwards was someone slapping him. At the very least, it had the desired effect.

If Arlong hadn't already been focused on me, I had just ensured his utmost attention for what would possibly amount to the rest of time. That damnable, incorporeal Rottweiler was on me once more, trying to keep my feet on the ground with oppressive force, and suddenly it hit me.

My arm felt unbearably sluggish when I tried to move it, but move it I did, Haki rushing down to my fingertips as I nudged at my glasses. The world faded away to shades and shapes, and I sent Armament flooding through my entire body, for lack of a better action to take.

"Stop!" I growled at the pervasive orange Haki that was shooting from Arlong's body in droves, most of it clinging to _my_ Haki and attempting to burrow through my skin. Some of it flew by me, hitting Fishmen and humans alike; anybody it touched immediately fell to the ground, foaming at the mouth. The man really wanted East Blue, fuck.

The sensation of heaviness vanished from my body when the final stretch of my skin turned black. I didn't stop there, pushing more and more until it was climbing off of my skin, bypassing my clothes and swallowing up the orange that did not belong there. It struggled, attempted to thrash with movements that looked like it didn't actually know how to move properly, and it couldn't have been more than a few seconds later that it had been entirely consumed.

I relaxed slightly, not letting the Haki descend back into my body just yet, and glanced up. There were two rows of razor-sharp teeth right in my face, which I managed to not flinch upon noticing, and beyond them was Arlong, holding a second pair of teeth in his other hand. The globe in his chest wasn't nearly as bright as it had been, and he was standing so still that for a moment, I was worried that I'd accidentally broken him.

I'd only told the Conqueror's Haki _that I_ _hadn't been expecting in the least_ to stop. What usually happened when it was defied? Was it usually defied? I had no damn idea.

Fucking megalomaniacs, making everything so difficult with their grand ambitions and consistently evil ways. He could have the fucking East Blue for all I cared. I wasn't the one who was going to do something about it.

A murmur was beginning to rise around us. Glancing up from Arlong's frozen form, I looked around us, only to see that a fucking _crowd_ had formed. Humans and Fishmen were standing side by side, having formed a circle like someone in the schoolyard had just screamed, "Fight!"

 _Eeeeediots_.

I reached up and snatched my glasses off my face, throwing them to the side so they could harmlessly dissolve, and gave all the morons who'd decided to stick around the best glare I could muster. Some of them flinched back, to my mixed delight and irritation, before I turned back to look at Arlong.

I don't think there was a word in existence to describe the look on his face. There were veins popping out on his skin _everywhere_ , and he was drenched in so much sweat that it looked like he'd just climbed out of the ocean. His arms were strained, shaking to the point of quivering, and his expression was so twisted that it looked like he was choking on his own tongue.

He'd… stopped. He was still moving, still breathing and straining against himself, and it looked like he may have been making some headway.

What to do, what to do… I could run and wait for his spirit to recover from its failed attack, but I had no idea how long that would take. I also didn't know if he'd go for someone else if I wasn't the closest target. People were stupid; I wouldn't put it past someone in the crowd to attack him and snap him out of it themselves, and then goodbye literally everyone. I could take him out right now, cover his nose in Haki and shove it right through his forehead… could I do that? Physically, _mentally_?

Absolutely, I could. But I had a… _better_ idea.

"Two- no, three hundred percent."

And by better idea, I actually meant that I was a shame to mankind, and I was ending this fight before it got the chance to really begin because I didn't want to have to deal with this.

I had Arlong's nose in my left hand. Taking a step towards him, I pulled my right arm back.

"Everybody RUN!" I shouted, right before letting it fly. Arlong, in his petrified state, could do nothing but stare. Because I was looking him dead in the eyes, I could see them widen with horror.

Now, Arlong was _tall_. He was, perhaps, the tallest person I'd ever seen in my life. He stood head, shoulders, and a bit more over me, and I was one of the tallest people I knew. That only gave me the advantage, because I didn't have to crouch down too far or come in at a weird angle, and I certainly didn't have to think about this and give myself the chance to reconsider this course of action.

I needed time. Time for everyone to clear right out. Time for Luffy and the others to get their shit taken care of. Most importantly, I needed time to run the fuck away, because this went against everything that Arlong and I had between us, by default of sharing the title of men. No, after this, I had no right to be called a man. I was but a boy, a child, an infant in my treatment of others and their belongings.

Zooming in at three hundred percent, covered down to the bone in Armament Haki, and with no chance to miss or reason to slow, my fist hammered home into Arlong's crotch. For a moment, I was worried that the shorts were just an aesthetic choice and I would end up looking the fool, but then something beneath my knuckles shifted and I _knew_. I _knew_ he would never have children.

Fuck. I think I heard something pop. Game over. Medic!

"I'm so sorry," I whispered as I forced my hand even further forward, and I really was. Someone as naturally inclined to the behaviour of a shithead as I was, I knew this pain well. It had happened a few times, back when I was wider than I was tall, and it had become a habit to inflict it right back whenever I was faced with someone looking to pick on me. The bullying had slowed all the way down, and had then stopped when one of my female classmates had made an attempt to restart it.

That had been an interesting day.

But I digress.

The force lifted Arlong off the ground a little, and he _squeaked_. All things considered, it was a very manly squeak. The hardened, racist, Grand Line level murderer fell to the ground like a sack of shit when I withdrew my fist, curling up into a ball that could give Samus a run for her money. The sets of teeth clattered uselessly to the ground beside him, and after giving a few more weak thrashes, he went deathly still.

Not a peep escaped him. I squirmed a little on the spot, before taking a cautious step forward. Positioning my fist so that I could hammer-drop it right back onto his dick if he made a move, because I was dishonourable like that and it probably wouldn't work ever again regardless, I slowly reached forward and placed two fingers against his neck.

...Shit.

I didn't hit him that hard, did I? Did fish have a vital organ in that part of their body or something? Did the force travel straight to his heart? Or did I-

I shifted my hand a little bit, and was rewarded with a weak throbbing beneath my fingertips. Oh, my bad. I was looking in the wrong place. He's alive.

I stood up again, wiping the knuckles of my right hand against Arlong's shirt in case anything that belonged to him was still there. With his nose, I scooped up both sets of jaws, because they looked like they could be useful later on, and then I remembered that I had a crowd.

I turned around, Arlong's nose brandished and my right hand still covered in Haki. The crowd of Fishmen all stared at me, and the humans hadn't seen fit to take my advice, mostly just standing around with their legs crossed and their hands shielding themselves.

We stared at one another, my eyes slowly roving over the horde of Fishmen. Nobody was saying anything. The wind whistled and sent a tumbleweed bouncing between me and them. I think something dripped from my right hand, but I couldn't be sure and I was kind of afraid to actually check.

As one, they all turned tail and began sprinting away. Literally, in a few cases. I was left there, holding half of Arlong's face in one hand and probably a fraction of his family jewels on the other.

And then Arlong Park toppled over.

The crowd of Fishmen paused for a moment, looking over their shoulders in eerie unison. I waved at them - _why is part of my hand blue_ \- and they turned back around, running faster than before.

How long had I been on this island? Ten minutes?

Fuck, I really _am_ terrible at following through.

 **XxX**

"One Puuuuuuuunnnnnccccchhhhhh…"

Arlong was digging a deep furrow through the dirt as I walked along the path to Arlong Park, dragging him behind me by one foot. He wasn't putting up any resistance, mainly because he was still out cold, and the monotony was beginning to get to me.

At least with Krieg, I could still talk to him. I mean, he didn't respond, but I could pretend.

"Three, two, one-" I mimed another punch, making the sets of teeth that I'd hooked through my belt knock against each other and jingle. I'd had to cover the entire thing in Haki after I'd misjudged just how sharp the teeth were, though all their holes had thankfully come back together on their own after a little while.

"Killshot!" I hopped over a small rock in my way, and heard the dull thud of Arlong's head bouncing off it. Oops. "I'm here for fun, I'm numbah one…"

The massive form of Arlong Park was looming in the distance, impressively tall even after facing devastation. Much like the Fishman in question, really. Arlong Park was both a wreck and made the other houses on this island look puny; Arlong was both a wreck and made me look puny.

"What are you sayin'!? Frustration!? No one can stahp meeeeehhhhhh!"

"Stop!"

I stopped. Multiple clicks sounded from behind me as I turned around, being met with six uniforms, one mutant looking thing, and six guns pointing in my direction. How had they managed to sneak up on me?

Were those _whiskers_?

"Who are you?" Oh my, he was wearing mouse ears.

I think I liked this guy.

I waved and opened my mouth to answer him, but several things caught my eye in that moment. Littered around the men holding their guns to me were large sacks, and I could make out a glint of something golden from inside the lip of one of them. Furthermore, I was looking down the barrels of their guns. None of them were pointing at Arlong, they were all on me.

My face fell. Just as I find someone with the courage necessary to wear something like that in public and not give two shits about it…

"Arlong paid you off, didn't he?" I crossed my arms. Arlong, the poor bastard, still had his ankle in my grip, and was dragged along.

The Marine, as his forehead denoted him, barely even flinched. "How did you defeat him?" He asked, taking a single step back so that he was behind all the guns. Given Arlong's current condition, it would probably have been safe to assume that I'd beaten the information out of him. What was this guy hoping these guns could do again?

I still sent Armament flooding through my entire body. Bullet holes were _annoying_.

"Punched him in the balls." I shrugged, and Arlong groaned. I didn't really know how conscious he was, but apparently it was enough to react to reminders. "I think they exploded, can't really be sure."

The guy wearing mouse ears ( _what_ was his name again?) stared at me for a moment, blinking a few times, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly. I hooked my free hand through one of the sets of jaws that were hanging from my belt, waiting patiently to see what what's-his-fuck was planning on doing with that information.

Hey, maybe I could continue on my way without drama, and Nami could beat her money out of his ass late-

"Fi-"

I reacted.

In hindsight, maybe I did the wrong thing. I should have thought about the world I was in, and the consequences of my actions. I should have given more regard for life in general, and how I was effecting those around me.

Except, on the other hand, why should I have really cared?

I flicked my hand out, sending the rows of teeth flying through the air. I've got absolutely no clue how they stayed stuck together like they were, but they did so I wasn't going to question it further.

I was aiming for the Marine in the unique uniform who had spoken initially, because if video games and cartoons had taught me anything, that meant that he was the higher ranking one in the group. Amazingly, despite the fact that I'd basically just fired a couple of connected boomerangs from the hip, they found their mark, wrapping around the man's neck and sending him crashing to the ground.

I'd just wanted him off his feet so I could punch him in the dick too, but I suppose that worked.

Perhaps, if someone else was in my position, they would have handled that differently. They would have used compassion. They would have negotiated. Maybe they would have stopped with some simple threats.

Yeah, no. Fuck that.

People had died. People _were_ dying. People likely would have died if Nami hadn't stumbled across the Straw Hats. Hell, her entire village probably would have marched to their deaths, if the scene I'd witnessed earlier on in the village square was anything to go off.

And really, what would have happened otherwise? Either he would eventually get caught, and be sentenced to prison or death, or he would slip right on by and do this shit again. Some people were just _toxic_ , and the world was better off without them. And you know what? To _Hell_ with it, I'd already antagonised a Marine before, I wasn't going to stay out of trouble for long.

Besides, he'd just tried to have me killed. Don't fucking dish it out if you can't take it.

Maybe those dolphins were good for something after all. It was remarkably easy to think through bloodshed after witnessing something on a level this island could only _dream_ of.

And no, that probably wasn't a good thing.

But I didn't really care.

The Marines around him, to their credit, only stared down at him in shock for a couple of seconds before snapping out of it. A series of consecutive bangs filled the air as they discharged their guns in my direction, peppering my body all over and punching holes in my clothes that closed over as quickly as they were formed.

I closed my eyes, just in case the Haki hadn't yet managed to make the jump over my eyeballs, and waited for the loud noises to stop before opening them again. The comical look of utter terror on their faces made a giggle bubble up from my throat; nothing, not even Gaimon in his box, had ever looked even _half_ as anime as that.

I took a step forward, and they all took several back, leaving behind the weakly thrashing form of their leader. I took another step forward, and pushed off the ground as hard as I could, wrapping my free hand around one of the men's throats as I flew past him and slammed him against one of the trees dotting the side of the path.

His gun clicked a few more times, his finger likely twitching on instinct, while his eyes widened so far that I'm surprised they managed to stay in their sockets. A deathly hush fell over the small group of men, save for the one I was holding.

"P-please!" he gasped out. I arched an eyebrow at him, was he expecting this to help his case? "I-I-I have chil-"

My fingers tightened automatically, cutting his words off and transforming them into a wet gasp. My Armament rose up from my hand, taking advantage of my lapse in control, and started to crawl out over the skin of his throat. He began shivering, either from that or just because of the terror, I didn't know, nor did it make that much of a difference.

"You think I give half a _fuck_ about your ugly children, when your negligence of your duty has killed entire _families_?" His lips began to flap, but no sound was coming out. I loosened my fingers a little bit, and he took a grateful breath, being clever enough to hold it and his tongue in case I reacted again.

"W-we had no choice!" I half turned towards the man that had spoken; he looked young, younger than me, and was easily the shortest person present. His gun was lying on the ground beside him; he was the only one to have dropped his. "Nezumi said that he had people watching our families! If we disobeyed him, we'd never see them again!"

He looked down to the side, to where I knew the mouse-onesie Marine was. So his name was Nezumi? Why did that seem to fitting?

"I haven't seen my boyfriend in a year." The Marine continued, his hands balling into fists at his side. My hand slackened further, not quite letting the man in my grasp go, though he did take a deep breath as I went over what I had been told.

 _He's lying_ , a sinister corner of my mind hissed in my ear.

 _But what if he's not_?

"...Take all that treasure back where you found it." I released the man from my grip, and he stumbled away, falling into the arms of two of his comrades and cuddling his rifle to his chest like he was never going to see it again.I turned to the man that had spoken before, my Armament melting back down to my finger now that there was nothing it was needed for. "What is Arlong's bounty?"

"Twenty million," he answered immediately, not even bothering to hide his slouch of relief.

"I have Krieg's head. Technically I have the rest of his body too, but that isn't important. Together, that makes ฿31,900,000." The young Marine's eyebrows rose, but he didn't say anything. I would have continued regardless, but at least now I wasn't being rude or anything. "I expect it in full with everything else you tried to take."

The group of men glanced at each other uneasily, all of them obviously wanting to say something, but none of them seeming willing to take the leap. Eventually, the young one took a step forward, one hand fiddling with the brim of his Marine cap.

"We don't have that much on board. We can only offer you twenty-five million."

"You also had a greedy as fuck commanding officer, and I will be amazed if he didn't make use of that greed to kit out his private quarters," I pointed out, both figuratively and literally. None of them followed my finger, none of them wanting to watch as Nezumi continued to flail weakly. "Make it work."

The young Marine turned back to his cohorts, all of them standing in a loose formation behind him. It looked like they were defaulting to his decisions by virtue of him being the only one to speak to me, and I kind of wanted to laugh at that.

I held it in, and waited for their decision, whatever it was going to be. Eventually, the young Marine nodded and gestured towards the bags, and the other men followed along with the command wordlessly. The young Marine didn't move with them, instead turning to face me once more and straightening to his full, if still unimpressive height.

Two of the Marines grabbed Arlong's insensate form, the cringes on their faces likely due to either remembering just what I had done to put him in such a state, or just being in the general vicinity of him. The other three grabbed two bags each, and they split off - the ones carrying the bags moving back the way I had come and the ones dragging Arlong leaving in between two trees along the side of the path, bypassing it altogether.

"Take me to Krieg's head." It was definitely a command. My lips twitched at the look on this tiny man's face, before I inclined my head in the direction of Arlong Park. That was most likely where the ship had been parked or docked or whatever you wanted to call it.

"Keep up." I gave a command of my own, turning on my heel and setting off down the path at a much faster pace than I had been moving before. After a moment, I heard feet pounding on dirt, and the small tuft of brown hair that was poking out from under the brim of a Marine cap was bobbing along beside me.

With his shorter legs, he had to jog to keep up with me. It was definitely funny, but I wasn't entirely focused on his unfortunate gait.

That had been… easy. Not talking to the Marines, that had gone about as smoothly as I figured it could, what with me likely committing murder in front of them and demanding to be compensated for it. They obviously held no love for Nezumi.

No. What did this make now? Two men and a whole fuckton of dolphins?

It had been too easy. I'd barely even needed to think about it. _Why had it been so easy?_

"You were robbed," I said quietly, mind still whirling. Dead, killing… just what was I becoming, exactly? I'd made the leap from accident to intentional without even needing to think about it. I fucking hesitated when it was Arlong, but _nothing_ for Nezumi?

Did I actually not care, or was I just telling myself that I didn't? Was I accountable, or was this just more sick shit being thrown my way? How much control did I _actually_ have, and how much of this was me trying to find something else to pin the blame on?

"Hmm?" The young Marine glanced up at me, still bouncing along in an effort to keep up. I sped up, my quick walk morphing into a medium jog, and the Marine lost all pretence of comfort, his shorter legs hammering against the ground in order to keep the distance between us level.

"You were robbed by a man who can deflect bullets with his skin, after he killed your Captain." We were almost at the gates of Arlong Park; we hadn't been very far to begin with, and had only sped up along the way. "Somewhere there's a Marine named Fullbody, he'll corroborate that I exist." If it was blackmail, then they'd need a way out.

The gates into Arlong Park were cracked and slightly ajar, not open enough to see what was happening inside, but not closed entirely. They looked heavy, but they swung easily enough under my palm, almost before I'd even touched them. I stopped just before I could enter, my feet rooting themselves to the ground as I took in the sheer scope of destruction I had been met with.

It looked like I was stepping into a warzone. I suppose, in a way, I was.

Fishmen littered the ground. All of them were injured in some way, be there cuts on their skin or bruises. Some had egg yolks covering parts of their faces, and some unfortunate looking souls had all three. There was a small semicircle of clear space in front of the gates, like someone had stood in front of them and pushed back anyone who had attempted to get through, and on top of the piles, I could see the crowd of Fishmen I had scared off back in Cocoyashi.

One of them, an octopus by the looks of it, was slumped almost halfway over the edge of the pool. Even as I watched, his insensate body lost whatever had been balancing it, and he splashed into the water and sank like a stone. He'd probably be alright.

I ducked through the doors before the Marine could, taking in the absolute carnage. There were pieces of building all over the place, and the floor was drenched to the point where I was worried at least twice that I would slip over. The air was alive with the groans of unconscious or barely conscious Pirates, and there was even a missing patch of concrete. Arlong's throne-like chair was bobbing in the middle of the largest bay area, each time getting more and more submerged.

Off to the side, near the middle of the walkway but not quite, I could make out seven human forms. Six of them were huddled in a loose circle around the seventh, and the final one – Nami – was crouched on the ground, her head bowed down. I took another step in, rising almost half a metre off the ground on top of the Fishman chest my foot had landed on.

There was a pool of red around Nami's feet, and I would have sworn that it was only growing larger. The momentary horror must have shown on my face, because as soon as I had noticed it, the young Marine was looking in the same direction as me, a frown on his lips.

I didn't say anything to him, electing instead to hop off the Fishman I was stood upon, hitting the ground at a run. His scrambling footsteps had no chance of catching up, and six heads snapped up as I thundered over to them.

"Na-" I had to dig my heels in to come to a stop before I smashed into one of them. Nami was absolutely fine – it looked like she hadn't even taken part in the fight. The only injury she boasted was the one on her head that was already wrapped up. Neither did any of the others did, really; the only indication that it hadn't been entirely one-sided was a small bruise just above Yosaku's eyebrow. Anger was one Hell of a stimulant, after all.

The… the thing that Nami was leaning over, on the other hand…

"Fishmen…" Holy fucking shit, it was a _kid_. "Gonna… kill 'em…"

"Move." I almost lost my footing as the Marine shoved his way past me, ducking around Nami's crouched form and laying a hand on the kid's wrist. Almost immediately, his fingers were covered in blood, and all I could do was _stare_. There wasn't a part of the kid's skin that wasn't either bloody or bruised. I couldn't even tell which part of him was cut, he just looked like he was… leaking.

With some difficulty, I tore my eyes away from the gruesome sight, gritting my teeth and doing my best to resist the urge to go back and stab Nezumi a few dozen more times. It wouldn't do anything to help, and a mutilated corpse would just inflate the bounty I was doubtlessly going to receive after this.

I waved Zoro off when he made to grab for his sword, surreptitiously grabbing Nami lightly by the shoulder and dragging her back as the Marine swore under his breath and began chest compressions. She spasmed for a moment, seeming to notice me for the first time since I'd arrived, before calming down and allowing me to drag her over to Luffy. I stopped a few steps away, making sure to keep the kid out of Nami's line of sight with my own body, and murmured lowly to Luffy, "I fought Arlong. The Marines have him now."

Luffy's eyes snapped from the kid to me. His eyes were shadowed by his hat, I noticed, and even though he wasn't glaring at _me_ in particular, the underlying emotions were still very noticeably there. Hell, I could identify his expression just by virtue of having had it on my face more than once in the past. He wanted very badly to hit a very specific someone very hard; three guesses who.

He opened his mouth. I braced myself for the reprimand that was sure to come, _Arlong had hurt his navigator, Arlong was HIS_ , but a quiet, almost hesitant, "Cask," cut him off. We both blinked in unison, looking down at the Navigator in question; I'd had to turn her around to get her eyes off the kid, and hadn't noticed that I still had my arm around her shoulder. I pulled my arm back quickly, but she didn't seem to mind, her eyes creeping back around until I bodily stepped to the side to continue blocking her sight.

She was pale, and shaking, and I didn't know what to say. How many times had I taken on the task of protecting an entire island when I was a child, gone out to do just that, and come back to a visual representation of my failure when I was closer than ever before?

She looked up at me, and for the first time since I'd met her, she actually seemed to look _up_ at me. Had she always been this small?

"Can you help him?"

I… fuck.

I looked over my shoulder, down at the boy who by all means should have already been dead. Down at the Marine who wasn't giving up on him, even if every compression was just pushing more blood out into the strips of his uniform that he'd torn apart and wrapped over every wound he could find. What was going through his head, how similar would it be to what Nami was thinking right now? That failure of protection, of not being able to uphold an oath that had been taken?

Maybe one set of jaws wasn't enough. Surely there were some hungry sharks in the nearby waters who wouldn't mind a bite of mouse?

"You're… asking for a miracle, Na-"

"How am I supposed to know what's a miracle and what isn't?" Some fire had returned to her eyes, her hands balling into fists at her side. She took a small step forward, barely moving at all, but when there had already been next to no space between us, it made all the difference in the world. "I've watched you pull your body back together. I watched you not eat or even _breathe_ for days! I've watched you fix a ship out on the ocean with nothing but spare wood and the broken parts! I've watched you eat a Devil Fruit!"

I tried taking a step back. Nami followed right along, jabbing an index finger into my chest with enough strength to almost knock me right off my feet. A bit of blood was running down her cheek; she would need to get an actual doctor to look at that cut, and soon. I caught her wrist before she could jab me again, manoeuvring to the side so that I wouldn't accidentally fall onto the Marine and interrupt him.

"And what if whatever I do just puts him into more pain, huh?" I shook her hand, and then immediately regretting it once she winced. Dropping her wrist, I took note of the bruise there, cursing this entire damn situation in my mind. What a fucking circus. "Say he dies anyway, and I make it worse for him. What should we tell his family then, huh? 'Sorry, I tried, but at least you got to hear his voice one last time! From the other side of the island! Because that was how loud he was screaming! Oh, by the way, watch your step, there're parts of him where you were about to put your foot down!'?"

I watched her seethe for a moment, her teeth grit so hard against one another than I think I heard some of them crack, and then the fight seemed to drain from her body. She stood there, eyelids falling into a look of mixed exhaustion and disgust.

"So, you wouldn't even try?"

I frowned, quite possibly scowled, and opened my mouth. To say what, I'm not sure, and after a moment I realised that. She… she honestly had a point.

 _How am I supposed to know what's a miracle and what isn't?_

The Going Merry was something I never would have anticipated. It was an instance of everything going horribly wrong, followed by everything going horribly right. We'd even pulled up at the gates of Arlong Park when all was said and done. Who's to say I couldn't do it again?

But if I fucked up…

No, you know what? No.

Fucking _no_.

 _"It's just bad luck."_ That's what she'd said when we were out in the Calm Belt. That was what she had said to me, even when it was my presence that had made everything go so utterly wrong. We should have gotten here faster. We would have gotten here faster, if it wasn't for me.

So, you know what, me? No.

Fucking. _No_.

Spinning on my heel, I took a step towards the Marine, and grabbed him by the shoulder. He glanced at me, his eyes widening in outrage as I shoved him to the side and took his place. Sending Haki flooding down the entirety of my arm with a flick of my wrist, I reached for my face, almost punching myself in the nose with rapid, jerking movements. The world melted away into shades and wisps, and the brilliantly purple orb right next to me shook slightly as its owner audibly gasped.

"Lens-Lens…" the Marine whispered. I didn't look up, too busy trying to figure out _where_ to start. There was… so much that I needed to do.

"Close," I grunted. "Lucas. Now, shut up."

With that, I lay a hand against the boy's chest, and I pushed away all thoughts and sensations of the outside world.

 **XxX**

I am no doctor.

I'm not a medic. I'm not a nurse. I'm not even that guy who wears a trench coat and sells medicinal herbs in alleyways. I can't tell you the first thing about the human body, besides the fact that most people probably have one. I mean, shit dude, I'm _dead_.

So believe me when I say that when I looked down at that kid, and saw how little there was left in his chest, I didn't need a fancy degree or years of training to tell you that he was pretty much fucked. I mean, me being all that was keeping him from the bleak abyss was already bad enough, but now I was trying to _do_ something about it?

I shook my head once, and tried to focus on what I had done with Merry. The problem was, I hadn't really done all that much. Merry had touched me, and that was as far as I needed to go.

Alright, Klabautermann. Merry was a Klabautermann, and that was just a fancy name for a ship spirit... maybe, fuck, bad start. She didn't really have a body beyond the ship. She hadn't had anything standing between me and what I could accomplish.

So, I needed to figure out how to get through to the kid's spirit. Even then, there was so little left of it that I didn't really know if there would _be_ any left by the time I figured out a way around the bones and muscles and shit. He couldn't exactly help me like Merry had; he was barely conscious and even less coherent. How was he even still _alive_?

Maybe I could cover his skin with Armament and go from there… but how would my Haki interact with him? If I covered his lungs, would he still be able to breathe? If I covered his heart, would it still beat?

There was nothing I could do on a surface level. Looking up at Nami, I made sure that she knew my eyes were on her before I acted, because I wanted her to be damn sure that she was responsible for what I was about to do.

I withdrew my hand, curving my ring and little finger inward and straightening out on middle and index fingers. Calling forth my Haki, I gave it a moment to sharpen along the tips of my fingers, using that time to silently apologise to the kid because I was almost surely about to cause him a _shitload_ of pain.

"Hold him." I told the Marine, and he complied almost immediately, clamping one hand on the kid's shoulder and another around his knees. I doubt the kid would have been able to move regardless, but I didn't want to take any chances, and evidently, the Marine agreed with me.

It occurred to me, in that moment, that I didn't even know the guy's name, and I scribed a mental note to correct that when this was all over.

Sucking in a breath through my teeth, I positioned my fingers above the kid's chest, where the last of his red spirit was fluctuating weakly. Contrary to my belief, he didn't scream or squirm when I pushed my fingers into and then _through_ his chest, he just gasped once and stopped breathing.

"Lemme know if this is going tits up." _Spirit isn't moving anymore, connected with heartbeat?_

"Focus," came the terse reply from the Marine. I bit back a sarcastic comment and redoubled my attention on the kid's chest, doing my best to ignore the noises coming from both him and Nami as I pushed my way towards the few remaining wisps of red. A few seconds later, my finger, up to the knuckle, finally brushed against the closest piece of his spirit.

Nothing happened.

 _Uh oh_.

Alright Lucas, do not panic. You still have time, there's still some soul left in this kid yet. Just focus, and… focus. Figure this shit out. Focus like a le… like a lens.

Lens-Lens. Gum-Gum. Flower-Flower. _Lens-Lens_.

My head snapped up to look at the Marine so suddenly that the man flinched backwards. "What is Lens-Lens!?" I barked basically into his face, almost spraying the poor bastard with saliva in my haste.

He twisted away, the outline of his face pulled down in a grimace. "A legend," came his simple reply. "I don't know anything more than that."

If I wasn't currently using a small child as a boxing glove, I would have slapped him. With a wordless growl, I turned back to the kid, feeling even further away from figuring out something to do than I was before-

No. _No_. It only _felt_ that way. Lens-Lens, the guy had recognised it, so there had to be something there. What could lenses do? They were in glasses, and they...refracted! They refracted light to focus or disperse it! Thank you, high school physics, this is literally the first time in my life you have ever been helpful! Assuming I'm not entirely wrong!

...Now what?

Taking a chance, I curled my finger around the small red strand in my grasp, coming dangerously close to losing my nerve when a rib caved in underneath my finger. I tried to push, tried to replicate the process I'd gone through with Merry, but where Merry had been nothing but accepting, this kid may as well have been a chunk of Seastone for how unrelenting his body was being.

I swear, if I managed this and it turned out the kid had done this to _himself_ , I was going to be severely fucking pissed. I mean, he was probably going to die anyway, but _if_ I managed this. _IF_.

"Kid, I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can, you need to work with me here." Really, it was worth a shot. His spirit was moving, it was there and I knew for a fact that I could do something with it, but it would have to _let_ me. "Neither of us can do this alone, and I'm the best bet you're gonna get."

I waited with something between irritation and fear, finger still trapping that piece of soul. How long had it been since his heart had stopped beating? How long could I physically keep him here before something was forced to give?

The shift was almost miniscule. Had I not literally been pushing for it, I probably wouldn't have felt it.

His spirit shifted, just a little bit, and a bit of Armament managed to seep in. That bit of Armament traveled down my finger and into his chest, passing through the red wisp and mirroring its colour on the other side.

The kid took one breath. It was shallow, it didn't restart his heart or close over his wounds, but it was a breath. His spirit swirled, and I grabbed it without remorse, pushing at it with the Haki coating my finger and moulding it into shape far too slowly for my liking.

It thinned as I forced it upwards, stretching that small wisp out into a crimson haze about the circumference of my finger. My own Haki seeped out to form a ring around it, and once the two ends had joined together, I pushed forward once more and forced a fleck of Armament into the ring.

It passed through without needing my prompting, taking on the same colour as the fog and spreading out into his chest. The flesh around my finger tightened slightly, bending around the black ring keeping the makeshift lens I'd made out of his spirit together, and with a jolt I realised what was happening.

His body was stitching itself together, like mine. As I watched, one of the few remaining wisps came into contact with some of the Haki I'd provided him, and both brightened considerably before swirling off far faster than they'd been moving before.

It was working. It was fucking _working_.

Slowly, I uncurled my finger, barely daring to hope as the spirit lens maintained its integrity. Withdrawing my hand slowly, I pumped more Haki through the connection, dragging it along with me and watching as the kid slowly began to _glow_.

Finally, my finger was barely resting against his skin, his chest having closed over as soon as I pulled out. It rose and fell slowly, I noted absently, as I reached up with a shaking hand and pushed at my glasses with a bare palm.

Colour flooded back into a world that was too well-defined to truly be reality. The kid's face, deathly pale for obvious reasons before, was now a healthy tan. Most of him was covered in red, with the brightest being the small circle I still held beneath my finger. As I watched, a small cut on his cheek closed over, bypassing the scar altogether to settle on healthy flesh.

He took a deep breath, pushing his chest up into my hand. _Thump, thump, thump_ , and my hand was over his heart no longer. I pulled my arm away from his body and spirit entirely, and the small circle of black collapsed into and became part of the red haze, all of which sank back into his skin now that it had lost contact with me.

My hand was _dripping_ with blood, but I still ran it through my hair regardless, my lips twitching against my will.

"Zheekee…"

I could feel the blood, still warm, slide down my face, only missing my mouth by millimetres. I turned my grin on the Straw Hats… and the massive crowd that had assembled behind them. When the fuck…?

"Zheekeehihihihi!" You know what, I don't care. My eyes found Nami's, and somehow, my smile got a little bit wider. "Never make... me do that again," I warned her through my laughter, because there was no way I needed an encore performance. He would live. The kid would live, because of _me_.

I don't know how to describe that feeling. It was overwhelming in a way that I'd never felt before. All I knew was that I never wanted to do it again.

The crowd was staring at me, murmuring to one another and pointing. I was hearing a lot to do with Arlong and his baby-maker, and I couldn't help but wonder how he was doing nowadays. How's the family, you know? How's the kids- oh wait.

Hmm… maybe I should have gone back to see if I could revive Nezumi. In all honesty, I was putting some serious thought into it, until an old man stepped out of the crowd and everyone went silent.

His mane of white hair was all over the place. His beard almost reached all the way down to his feet, which didn't seem as impressive an accomplishment when he looked about half my height and was hunched nearly all the way over. He hobbled to the front of the crowd on his cane, squinting up at me with one eye, his other as wide as his gaping, toothless maw.

Without warning, he grabbed the bottom of my shirt, and yanked me down to eye level. I was still wearing my glasses, and the horrors that I witnessed from being that close to his face are the nightmares that I shall take with me to the second grave.

"For he shall descend as the eighth year of pain passes, along with his straw hat, his three swords, his banquet and his Tengu, and he shall erase the false prophet and the false prophet's descendants with a single blow!"

I almost shit myself when he suddenly began to scream, right into my face. He released me, and I made sure to put a couple more steps in between the two of us before anything else could happen.

The old man… fell over. I was about to ask him if he was alright, before he fought his way to his knees, and… fell over again. A large majority of the crowd, every single one of them except the blue-haired woman from earlier in fact, all got onto their knees, and began to emulate the old man's movements with far more ca- ahhh, they were bowing.

 _Wait wut._

I looked at Nami, but she was doing her utmost to avoid my eyes. I looked at the rest of the crew, and of course, they weren't about to be any help. Johnny and Yosaku were looking at me like they'd just been enlightened, and I shook my head at them slowly before they could get any ideas. The blue-haired woman was smirking at me, genuinely _smirking_ , and I got the distinct impression that she was enjoying this.

I even turned to look at the Marine that was still sitting beside me. He shrugged up at me, and then went back to ensuring the kid's vitals were alright.

"Those that fall in battle will have life breathed into them once more, to live is to serve for the remainder of eternity! He will bring death to the mortal enemy of his kin, and he shall bring prosper to his subjects in both life and love!" Several of the women in the crowd, along with one man, all raised their heads and winked at me. I would like you all to remember that I was currently covered in blood, and I think I was still smiling like a madman. Lemme just tap along my lips here - yep, smile was intact and going strong.

The old man, his forehead against the ground and his body still bent like an old tree, twisted his head until he was staring at Nami, and I swear to all that is fucking holy that his head went a full three hundred and sixty degrees more to the left than was strictly necessary. Seriously, where the fuck had all these people come from? The gate was on the other side of Arlong Park!

"Nami!" He barked, and she flinched badly. Almost like she knew that something was about to happen... "Cocoyashi thanks you, for you have found the Shark God!"

Oh, Nami found a Shark God- _wait wut_.

"Wait, Cletus, the prophecy said 'as the eighth year passes', he's early!" some random guy in the crowd shouted.

For a moment, I dared to hope.

"…He's even better than the prophecy said he'd be!" the same man hooted, and that set off a round of cheers that came very close to deafening me.

 _There's no hope_.

"All hail the Shark God! All hail the Shark God!" the entire crowd chanted, bending down in one fluid motion and coming back up. "All hail the Shark God!" The old man tried an overly enthusiastic bow and ended up smashing his head against the concrete. I mean, I could probably stitch him back together if necessary, because apparently I _could_ do that, but did I really want to?

Briefly, I glanced to the side, eyeing the pool that led out to the ocean. You know what, I think I could make it. Now all I needed to do was redevelop a reliance on oxygen so sinking to the bottom would have an effect.

"All hail the Shark God!"

For fuck sakes, I'd only been on this island for about _half an hour_.

"All hail the Shark God!"

 _Gggguuuuurrrgghhh_.

* * *

 **A/N:** This arc isn't over yet. Not by a long shot.


	14. Chapter 14

There is nothing scarier than a group of people you don't know being happy to see you.

Oh, I'm sure that statement is subjective. Some people could have nightmares about looking up in the middle of the day and seeing the moon about to land on their head. Others may prefer that situation to being locked in a room with a clown. Hell, for me, spiders would be a close second. Creepy little fucks. You don't need that many legs!

But no, there is nothing scarier than a group of unknown people who are happy to see you. Bonus points if you're in the middle of nowhere, and they're following the lead of a guy with a name like Cletus.

 _An island is made up of middle of nowhere._

No thank you, I like my body parts. You are _not_ allowed to cut them off and then feed them to me. I don't care if you pray to me every night.

At first it was alright; they were just bowing and chanting. Of course, at the time, bowing and chanting were nowhere near alright on their own, but looking back on the situation and all that followed it, it had been more than alright. At least they hadn't had candles or pentagrams.

It stopped being alright when one of the women in the crowd, probably not all that much older than me, decided to jump up and rush me. She was closer to the front, which left her maybe five metres to cover, and she did so in record time. She then flung herself at me, and I had to stand there and take it like the little bitch I am deep down inside, because she would have landed on the kid if I'd stepped to the side, and that kid's life was _mine_ and _mine_ _alone_.

She latched onto my face in a perfectly executed Reverse Baby Koala Mode activation. What followed is what I can only describe as an attempted assassination via extensive contact with the ample surrounding flesh of the mammary gland to my nose and mouth.

Fortunately for me, her poorly thought out method failed to take into account the fact that I didn't have to breathe, and thus I was safe. _Un_ fortunately for me, that also set off a chain reaction of everybody leaping back to their feet, and Cletus led the charge to get a piece of me before I was all taken up. They were just… _so_ _thankful_.

There was just not enough sexy, sexy Lucas skin and bones for everybody. A sad but true inevitability of life.

That didn't stop them all from trying.

I had to squirm out of the woman's grasp before they were all on me. I had to use my hands to push at the only surface within reach that would afford me leverage, which put my appendages into quite the precarious position and subjected my innocent, untainted ears to the horrifying results of anime world female anatomy.

At least _someone_ was enjoying themselves.

The last thing I saw before I absconded into the bright daylight with no nice hidden shadows to speak of was her luminescent face, glowing bright enough to lead ships to port.

"What are you doing?"

I kept my eyes resolutely shut as the voice washed over me, as pleasant as it was unwelcome. I'd left the creepy cultists behind with the Straw Hats for a reason, because Luffy would likely eat them before they could eat him, but one of them had obviously decided to follow me up into this tree.

This tree, that also happened to be the biggest tree I could see. Up in these branches, I felt free. I do decree, upon the importance that I flee, that all of the island is mine to see, to my utmost glee, from the tip-top of this tree.

You feel me?

Still, I took encouragement from the lack of utter devotion in her voice, and turned slightly to address her.

"I would tell you I'm currently meditating on the morality of the human race and how it relates to me now that I find myself apart from my own interpretation of what that represents, but seeing as you haven't already called me 'Sir' five times, I'm assuming I don't have to talk out of my ass to you to avoid being sacrificed in the name of your possibly sacrilegious selachimorpha deity." I opened my eyes to the face of the blue-haired woman from before blinking up at me blankly. The sarcasm in my voice was matched in intensity only by my regrets in life. "I'm hiding in this tree because this island is apparently fucking insane. Name's Lucas, by the way."

I technically hadn't been lying, either. I'd been attempting to think back on my moral dilemma over the last little while, but every time I brought speculation of Nezumi to the forefront of my mind, I was answered by my own wandering thoughts with a resounding, _'meh.'_

Kind of harsh, me. Though on the other hand, he _had_ been wearing mouse ears.

…See what I mean?

"Nojiko. Nami's sister," she introduced herself, answering both who she was and why I was getting the feeling that I should have known who she was. I looked down at her, and she stared up at me, until I finally rolled my eyes, shuffled along the branch I was sitting on, and offered her a hand up. Anyone willing to climb a massive tree just to talk to me deserved a conversation.

She hoisted herself up easily, swinging a leg over to straddle the branch and leaning back until she was reclined against the trunk. I nudged myself back as far as I was willing to go, crossing my legs underneath me and leaning both elbows against my knees.

"So, serious question," she said. I grunted and inclined my head as Nojiko brought one knee up to her chest and draped an arm over it, waiting for her to get comfortable and continue. "Are you actually the Shark God?"

I hunched over a little bit further and snickered, because the absurdity of that statement was still a bit much. "I don't think so." I stopped and thought about it for a moment, before choosing the add, "and no offence, but if I was the prophesied deity of the woo-woo cult that resulted from close to a decade of desperation under a sadistic tyrant, I think I would be able to tell."

From this high up, the Conomi Islands actually looked, dare I say, ridiculously appealing. Much of what I could see was the lush green of trees and grass, rolling along with the hills. interspersed with brown spiderwebs that I could only assume were walkways. There were villages dotted amongst the trees in every direction, little collections of houses that could be found if one trail was followed far enough, but nothing truly spectacular enough for me to risk leaving the tree and exploring.

There was even an orange grove in the distance; the colour of the fruit against the green background worked quite well, even from this distance.

"None taken, really." I busied myself with hooking my legs underneath the tree branch I was sitting on before tipping over backwards, slowly swinging back and forth in the gentle breeze and staring out over the island from an entirely new angle. I was barely paying attention to what Nojiko was saying to me - quite rude of me if I do say so myself - but there was so little noise up here that I wasn't worried I was going to miss anything.

"I've actually been hearing about it for way longer than Arlong's been here, but I was adopted into this and I was never really a believer in the first place."

I almost slipped right off the branch at that sentence, before my brain caught up and my legs clamped back down with enough force to splinter the bark.

"Wait, there's actually a prophecy about some Shark God that I accidentally managed to fulfil?" I struggled my way back up until my neck was craning over the edge of the branch, staring at Nojiko uncomprehendingly. "Are you fucking serious?"

She looked down at me, with a smug little smile on her face, and snickered. It was one of the most evil sounds I'd ever heard in my life.

I think I liked this woman.

"Heh... you should have seen the first two minutes Arlong was here." It was like a switch had been flipped, the moment she realised what she was saying. Her eyes lost their spark even as she held my gaze, before slowing turning around to stare out over the island. I don't think she was still in that tree, and I doubt she was really seeing the spectacular view. "Everyone was so excited, until…"

"I'm sorry."

I've really got to stop proclaiming my liking of people. Bad shit keeps happening.

Nojiko shot me an odd look, and I floundered for a moment, still hanging upside down by my legs. We were both a couple hundred metres off the ground at least, and the drop was looking extremely attractive in that moment.

"Nami told us all before we got here. About Bell-mère, I mean, and... I, uh…" Damn it, I wasn't any good at consolidation. "I... don't know why I'm apologising, I guess it's just because I've lived through those two minutes of hope before everything goes catastrophically wrong."

Nojiko tilted her head at me in a gesture that wasn't entirely unlike something I could have sworn I'd seen Nami do in the past. I just shrugged and relaxed the muscles in my back, going more or less limp and allowing the gentle breeze to knock me around. "It's how I lost my grandmother."

And _how_ she would have whooped my ass with a focaccia if she ever heard me refer to her in something so disrespectful as _English_.

It must have shown on my face, whatever I was feeling, because it drew a tiny snort out of Nojiko and broke her thousand-yard stare. Come to think of it, that was the typical reaction whenever I began to talk about family...

"I guess I'm sorry too, then."

I waved a hand dismissively, and then used that same hand to trace around the circumference of the branch. I had to concentrate for a moment, but soon enough Haki was pouring out onto the wood, following along the trail my hand left and continuing until it had latched onto one of my ankles. With the nonchalance of a man who had no death to fear, I let myself fall, only making it about half a metre until I ran out of improvised rope and was left hanging by one leg.

Believe it or not, that was exactly what I had been trying to do.

"Don't worry about her, it's in the past."

Something behind me whistled. Startled, I let my neck flop backwards until I was hanging completely limp, watching as a firework sank into the sky and then exploded once it was about level with us. "It is a sorry state of things, isn't it?" I continued, the sarcasm in my voice killing any chance of my words being taken seriously.

The firework curved into the shape of a shark, before dissipating. It was _close_ to sunset, but considering it was still light out, I would have thought they would use the less important ones for the testing phase. Come to think of it, could fireworks be considered weapons?

Nojiko snickered again. That noise that was as heinous as it was entirely welcome, and I felt the strangest sensation. No, not in my pants, you perverts; it felt like something had just brushed against the deepest part of my chest, the part that wasn't exactly solid enough to actually touch.

Nojiko withdrew her finger from where she'd been poking at my Haki, and then had the audacity to wipe it on her pants. Excuse you, this may be second-hand, but I keep it clean with regular unwanted dips in the fucking ocean… how _long_ had it been since I'd last bathed?

"Not anymore. You should see the effort everyone is going to down there." There was another whistle behind us. Both Nojiko and I stopped what we were doing to watch as an almost indiscernible dot spiraled into the sky, where it came to our level and exploded into… had they been stockpiling that all this time, or was it simply luck that they had one of Arlong curled up on his side, holding his balls?

That's… you know what, I'm not going to question it.

"We haven't had a party in eight years; I think they're going to try to catch up all at once," Nojiko noted idly, as the last few sparks vanished and the sky was clear once again. That lasted for all of two seconds, before one of the larger villages in sight burst into lights of all imaginable colours, bathing the surrounding trees in a disco glow so brilliant that it probably would have blinded me if I'd been wearing my glasses.

A massive cheer rose up from the ground, of the 'huzzah, we are finally free!' variety, and I rolled my eyes and looked away.

"Well, I hope they have fun."

More fireworks lit the rapidly darkening sky, and I shifted my attention to them, marvelling silently at the surplus they must have had. Were they planning on keeping this up throughout the whole party?

Nojiko turned to me, the light of a green firework that had burst alarmly close illuminating her face with a sparkling emerald. "You're not going to join in?"

"As tempted as I am to fuel their delusions of my grandeur, it wouldn't-" I broke off into a chuckle as the next firework popped, and a gleaming yellow straw hat stretched across the sky in front of us. I'm pretty sure that among the ruckus coming from the ground, I could hear Luffy cheering. "Zheekee… it wouldn't be right to lie to them. Besides, parties aren't my favourite thing in the world, and I saw the way some of those people were looking at me. I don't want it to turn into one of _those_ cults."

A shiver ran up my spine unbidden. I just knew that if things went down that path, then Cletus would be the first one in li- OH GOD, BAD IMAGES IN MY BRAIN.

"Not even a little bit?" I choked on thin air and flopped bonelessly from the branch. My mind had gone into shutdown before anything could be burned into it forever, and was now desperately attempting to reverse the damage.

Nojiko either did not realise this, or did not care. She grinned down at me, as if her stupid home had done no wrong. "You could just snap your fingers and they'll all kneel before you."

The urge to vomit was a powerful one. Somehow, I managed to fight it back, because the thought that maybe I would lose the Devil Fruit if that happened and would have to eat it all over again was a bit too horrifying. Though getting rid of it wouldn't be too bad… but what if I ever needed it again- ulp!

No, abandon the train, lose-lose situation on board! Derail, derail!

"Yes, and perhaps if I were almost anybody else, I would be _oh so_ tempted to abuse that privilege." Was my face green? I felt as though it should have been distinctly green. "Thankfully for this island's innocence, I've my own reasons to keep it in my pants indefinitely."

Hmm. Would it even work? It hadn't really done anything so far except weigh me down, continuing the streak that had been going for two decades. Ah, whatever, chances were it would never come up anyway, pun intended.

There was no response incoming from Nojiko, so I turned back to the ground, taking it all in between the brief flashes of more fireworks. They really were going all out, apparently, but I was fine to stay up here in my tree and enjoy being so far away from the ground.

"…You know," Nojiko finally broke the silence that had been stretching for a few minutes, idly tapping a fingernail against the branch she was still sitting on. Why she was even still up there was anyone's guess. "It's probably a good thing that you're so attractive. Otherwise I would be forced to label you so boring that you lack any redeeming qualities."

 _Excuse_ me?

"Oi!" In a maneuver I would have been very hard-pressed to pull off back when I was alive, I curled upwards and settled back onto the branch seamlessly, drawing my Haki back into my body and pointing an accusatory finger in Nojiko's direction. "I saved your entire miserable island from Arlong, and became a false God through happenstance of your redneck bullshit. _How_ is that considered boring?"

Nojiko looked inordinately pleased with herself as she crossed her arms and scoffed in my face. "You punched Arlong in the dick. Anybody could have done that, except nobody was stupid or suicidal enough to try."

 _She wounds me, being so dismissive of my stupidly suicidal methods._

"Why don't we just choose to focus on the fact that I succeeded, and leave it at that?" Mirroring her stance, I crossed my arms and leaned back, stopping just before gravity could send me back over the edge. With a haughty sneer upon my lips, I turned up my nose and huffed like the drama queen that I was. "Or was everybody here just so eager to wait out those eight years?"

It was somewhere around the final echo of the final word in my sentence, when I realised what it was that I'd just said. To someone who wasn't my friend, hadn't been forced to stay around me for extended periods of time, and had just seen the light at the end of a pain-filled tunnel that had lasted for close to a decade.

You don't say that to someone you've never met before. It is _I_ that is the _eeeeediot_!

Nojiko sniffed, and I awaited the retribution that was to come. Whether it be in the form of words, or a fist knocking me clean out of the tree. What I wasn't expecting was the short bark of laughter, and the nudge that, while powerful, wasn't nearly enough to push me over the edge.

"Whatever, your loss! I just wanted to find out if I should bother worshipping you or not." I glanced down at the shoulder she'd pushed, expecting to see something along the lines of a landmine, but was greeted with nothing. By the time I looked back up, Nojiko had a foot against the trunk of the tree, from where she sent me a sarcastic two-fingered salute. "Have fun up in this tree all by your lonesome. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go enjoy myself at what will likely break the record for longest and hardest party in the history of East Blue."

She rolled her eyes, and then _jumped_. I watched as she skipped from branch to branch, never staying on any single one for more than a second, and reached the ground less than a minute later. She waved up at me, and then turned her back, making her way down the periodically lit path as though she didn't have a care in the world.

I sat up there in my tree for a moment more, my head tilting back until I was looking at the sky. A firework exploded in that moment, and the glow it provided made the cloud I was looking at seem to take the shape of someone with their chin in their hands, their eyebrows falling shut and their forehead tipping forward.

Three fireworks chose that moment to shoot up above the cloud, higher than any preceding them, and explode. A trio of sparkling, golden 'Z's burst into life, hovering around the cloud for a moment before shrinking, rather than dissipating.

This couldn't be healthy. If I kept getting mocked at this rate, my self-esteem issues would develop self-esteem issues.

I glanced over the edge of my branch one more time, down at the little collection of houses that only seemed to be getting brighter. If I had only one word to describe them, it would be 'inviting'.

"...Ah, screw it."

Coating myself in Armament Haki, I pushed off the branch. I could go back to pretending to care about what was right later. Enabling a group of mental cultists was infinitely more fun in almost every way. I mean, worst case scenario is that they eat me, but that could actually be kind of funny and I wouldn't mind watching them try to get through my Haki.

It's usually at this point that I say something, only to immediately be proven wrong, so you know what? This party was probably going to _suck_.

 **XxX**

I had... _mixed feelings_ about this party.

On the one hand, it wasn't a party being dedicated solely to _me_ , like I'd been believing. The rest of the crew, along with Johnny and Yosaku, were being lathered with attention, which they honestly deserved far more than I did. I wasn't there when they took out the entirety of Arlong's crew, but _they'd taken out the entirety of Arlong's crew_. I'd literally thrown one punch, and really, it hadn't been all that impressive. Hell, I'd brought a weapon and hit below the belt; that's _cheating_.

I mean, I didn't really give a shit, but _still_. They'd put the work in, and it looked like they were enjoying the attention.

So it was good. Fantastic, even.

The food looked great, even if I couldn't enjoy any of it. The games that the children were playing reminded me of when I had faith in the world. I politely ignored the fact that none of them looked any younger than eight.

Music was being provided by a small group of instruments. The people playing them were a bit out of practice, but nobody seemed to care. Honestly, it was catchy enough for me to wonder if they had a clarinet handy, so that I could join in.

I'd never liked parties in the past, but if I had been anybody else, I think I would have enjoyed this one immensely. _If I had been anyone else_.

Instead of enjoying myself immensely, however, I got… the believers. You know, _those_ believers.

I was asked to bless crops and fishing ventures. I was asked to grant their request once I ascended again and became the giant shark in the sky (was that a _thing?_ ). I was asked what the proper garb for my followers was supposed to be, as it had been hotly debated for century- _is this seriously a thing that is happening right now?_

But all of that was… merely annoying. Perhaps even, given a fortnight of hindsight, potentially amusing. No, the escalation arrived with the third official hour of the party. The hour where everybody had let go of their inhibitions. The hour when everybody of age who didn't have the name Zoro or Nami were busy getting shitfaced. And when that happens...

Well…

"Hey, Sarrk Gud, I-I heared a diff-ent version of the prophesh."

I got the _admirers_. I got the _admirers,_ that are still sitting in a bar half an hour before closing time early on a Saturday morning, trying to chat up the attractive guy who had once again been worn down until he agreed to come out tonight because _'it's not normal or healthy to shut yourself away,'_ or, _'because your bullshit has gotten me laid so many times before! Come on,_ please _, I'll shout your drinks!'_.

No-not that I'm speaking from experience or anything! No, not at all, I've never even looked at a pub before. What's a nightclub? Pardon, al-ker-hole?

But I digress.

That was more or less the situation I was looking at right now. A blonde woman, unnatural beautiful, large chest, and small waist; more or less indistinguishable from every other woman surrounding her that was quickly getting hammered. Replace the physical differences, and I'd faced this situation before. And it was never fun.

The only major difference was the shape of her mouth. To put it nicely, her lips curved up and down at the wrong points, which did not go well with the seductive half-lidded stare she was giving me. To put it simply, her mouth was a fucking 'W', and that's _weird_.

Probably normal here, honestly, but I didn't want it anywhere near me.

I think she was trying to be sexy. Her expression made me want to take a step back before she threw up all over me. All things considered, that was probably a more appropriate reaction to such close proximity to me. Don't tell me you've already forgotten exactly _what_ she was hitting on.

"You an-and me… _did_ stuff."

"I'm gay." I told her, making sure my voice was louder than the music and people around us. This was usually the easiest way to chase them off, and if it wasn't… "And I currently have a life long dream of dying a virgin."

You know, again. Who was heartless enough to destroy a lifelong dream?

"My name's Pashley!" Her volume far exceeded mine. I cringed back a little bit, because holy shit that was a pair of lungs, and as soon as I was opening my eyes again, she had crossed the distance at speeds that I refuse to acknowledge as human and had a firm grip on the potential future of my family line. Clothes were of little consequence, apparently, considering she'd gone underneath them all.

. _..Her hand was cold._

There is not a word in any language that could accurately portray the amount of _nope_ I was feeling. A quantum supercomputer, calculating for a thousand years, could not even _approach_ the number of _nopes_ flowing through my being in that very second.

"Don't worry," she whispered in my ear, reaching into her nostril and yanking out a hair, "it doesn't count if we're both crying."

 ** _NOPE._**

"THE STARS ARE ALIGNED! WHO WANTS THEIR FORTUNE TOLD!?" I screamed into the crowd around us. A cheer rose, and I was thankfully swept away by a tidal wave of sloshed idiots. Quite literally; my feet left the ground after the third step and I didn't manage to get down until I was seated in front of an extremely large bonfire.

Right next to where Nami, Nojiko, and some old guy were roasting marshmallows. I did my best to beg them silently for help, but they were doing a great job of ignoring me. Then a grown-ass man sat down in my lap like I was some sort of pedo in a shopping centre, and things kind of snowballed from there.

The next hour was passed with me pretending I could tell people's fortunes. Luckily enough for me, as I went along, it slowly became apparent that they would believe anything.

"You will grow the largest onion ever seen in the world. You will then lose it in the mighty flood that approaches in five years."

"You will find and obsess over a treasure map. Eventually, you will drown. Rest in peace."

"Yes, she _does_ think your head is too small for your body."

"Your life will be happy, so long as you can control your bowels. Incidentally, you're going to be very sad in a few years."

"You're probably not deaf. You heard me!"

"Yes, the world is ending soon, and it's all your fucking fault."

It was all fun and games until the last guy tried throwing himself into the bonfire. I caught him by the scruff of the neck as he leapt off my lap, and dropped him off to the side as he babbled about how gracious a lord I was for saving his life and how he would never stop working towards ending the world in my honour.

He had an apple-shaped scar under his left eye. I took note of that, just in case he actually did get anywhere.

Eventually, I'd gotten through what must have been the entire archipelago. Usopp had even come by for a reading, and the grin I'd gotten in return after telling him he would no doubt achieve his dreams if he never gave up could have lit up the entire island. Ironic, in a way, that the only time I was telling what I knew to be the truth was when I was talking to a liar.

After that, he'd gone off to begin spinning tales about The Great Captain Usopp's many adventures sailing upon the seas with the Shark God to anybody who would listen. Turns out that number was remarkably high.

When a man came forth for the third time, I had to clap my hands and declare that the stars were no longer in perfect alignment. They moaned, and I shrugged at them. What was I supposed to do, you know? Stars. Can't do it. Not today.

Still, they complied, like children who were eager to please. Except I didn't need to dose them all with sugar, I just needed to punch some dickhead in the nuts.

The fireworks soon started back up, now that those manning the stations and sending them up weren't waiting on being serenaded by the copious amounts of shit coming out of my mouth. The party launched back into full swing, the music even louder than before. From the corner of my eye, I'm pretty sure I could make out two people I'd predicted would die sometime very soon disappearing into the shadows, hand in hand.

Yes. Yes my children, go prosper. This is why they worshipped me.

"Do you have any idea how many phobias you've started today?" Nojiko asked me idly, withdrawing her stick from the flames in front of us. The molten fluff that used to be a marshmallow dripped off of it, and her teeth clicked around thin air in her desperate attempt to catch it.

I cackled a little bit, both at her misfortune and her question. The weird looks I got in response were totally worth it.

Nojiko nudged me in the side, just below my ribs, and I choked on my laughter. Fuck, I hated it when people did that.

"I can't help but feel like you're taking advantage of this situation," the slight tremor in her voice told me exactly what she actually thought about that. Or maybe she was laughing at the fact that I was still trying to hack my tongue back up out of my throat.

I tried to glare at her, but a head of blonde hair behind her caught my eye. Its owner faded into the darkness before I could be sure I'd really seen them, but I could have sworn I saw some sort of… was that a smile? Was that an expression of longing? Was it a… stupid fucking hamster face?

...But I don't wanna be a Denko, not again! How did a human even do that? _Was_ she a human!?

Someone clicked their fingers in my face. I recoiled slightly, refocusing on the small group in front of me. The old man withdrew his hand, and pulled his perfectly browned marshmallow from the flames.

"Eh?"

"You were staring off into space, kid. Like you'd seen a ghost or something."

"Oh, right. Yeah, sorry about that." I shook my head once, and then slapped myself across the face. It was a sharp sound, but nowhere near loud enough to be heard clearly over the music. I shook my head again with a small sniff, and finally offered the thoroughly bemused man a quick grin. "Sorry, just reliving… several uncomfortable memories."

He stared at me for a moment, the silly pinwheel on his hat slowly turning. Would you believe me if I said I'd only just noticed it now? Because I did, and I wasn't all too sure how I'd missed it up until that point.

Not to mention the scars all over his body. There were so many… maybe I had noticed them and just forgotten? That was a distinct possibility.

"Thanks." He finally said, his voice gruff.

"Don't mention it." He opened his mouth again, but I quickly cut him off. "Seriously, don't. It's all I've been hearing tonight, and you're one of the first people to not throw themselves at me."

I shrugged as his eyebrow slowly started to rise. "Don't get me wrong, I _am_ enjoying… _most_ of the attention, but the variety is good too. Keeps me grounded and stops me from becoming a vengeful God."

Without looking away from me, he picked up his stick, and began to slowly chew on his marshmallow. He swallowed, narrowed his eyes, and then turned to Nami.

"You're right, he is a pain."

Nami snorted into her own marshmallow, which looked like it hadn't even touched the fire, and I got my first good look of her since sitting down. The cut on her head had been wrapped in fresh bandages, and I could see the brief outline of all the stitches through the fabric. There must have been a doctor on the island somewhere that had patched her up, because to be quite honest, I'm not entirely sure how she managed to stay _conscious_ this long. The wound must have been open for hours up until that point.

Just goes to show what determination and One Piece biology can get you, I guess. That kid was a shining example as well; come to think of it, where _was_ he?

Dropping her stick, now devoid of marshmallow as it was, Nami stood up, brushing her hands against her shorts and running a hand over her tattoo. Hmm, had that changed? I couldn't really tell, I'd never paid it much attention before.

"I'm going to go visit Bell-mère. I haven't really gotten the chance yet today." She gave us all a tired smile, and from the corner of my eye, I noticed small groups turning in our direction. Ahh, right, she'd been the one to go out and 'find' the 'Shark God', hadn't she? I'd be surprised if she hadn't been getting the same sort of attention as me. "I'll see you later?"

"We'll still be here when you get back," Nojiko announced, poking me in the side with her marshmallow stick. She squawked at me indignantly when I slapped it out of her hand, not seeming to notice that it had speared right through the old man's marshmallow when he'd been about to take a bite out of it.

He stared down at perfect cross the two sticks had created blankly, before flicking it all into the bonfire and pushing himself to his feet. "I'll come with you."

Nami's smile and shoulders seemed to shed some of their exhaustion. "Thanks, Genzo."

Genzo, Genzo… Oh, _Genzo_!

Pleased with my minute discovery, I almost didn't notice Nami's eyes on me before she turned away. It was odd, really, the way her expression shifted. It wasn't like anything I'd seen directed my way before. The closest I could guess was maybe appreciation?

And then Nojiko slung an arm over my shoulders, and Nami was looking away, whatever she'd been trying to convey gone with the light wind.

I tried to shrug her off twice, but once she'd made it clear she wasn't budging, I gave up and slumped backwards. Nojiko began leaning into me, and I had almost accepted my fate by the time she bypassed what I'd been expecting her mark was entirely and whispered in my ear.

"Pashley's been staring at you ever since you got here. You look like you're worried she'll eat you."

Pashley… Pashley… oh, right, letterhead.

I turned around slightly, glancing up at Nojiko through my eyelashes. I pulled away a little bit and let loose a simper; just a little upwards twitch of the lips that was designed entirely to annoy.

The bushes beside us rustled slightly as I leaned back in. Nojiko matched my expression, and I stopped just short of bumping our noses together.

"In that case," I began lowly, "please don't let me out of your sight for even a second." I brought my right hand up; the one that was facing the bushes now, my fingertips hovering just over Nojiko's cheek. I edged closer - just enough to feel her breath on my face, and the bushes definitely shook from within this time. "I don't particularly feel like being drugged tonight, or any other night for that matter."

Honestly, I had my doubts that my system would be effected all that much, if at all, but I would rather not have to take that chance. People were crazy.

Nojiko's eyelids fell, her expression softening somewhat as she leaned even closer to my fingertips. I was impressed with her ability to act, up until the point when her lips split into a sly grin and she leapt up, seizing my hand and dragging me along with her with surprising strength, considering her noodle limbs.

"Uh-"

"Come on, Shark God." That was a teasing lilt if I've ever heard one. "Let's go make this song _ours_."

Wait, as in dancing?

I gave myself a split second to make a decision. The majority of me, that hated the parties and cringed away from human contact, was telling me to dig in my heels or perhaps throw myself into the bonfire. Which would continue to burn with nobody watching it, and _that_ was irresponsible.

Then I caught a flash of light hair in the bushes, and gave the majority of myself the mental equivalent of purposefully tripping it while we're both running from a bear, because I didn't need to outrun the _bear_.

"Eh, fuck it, why not?" I more or less went limp, only focusing on keeping my legs moving so I stayed level with Nojiko. "Though I feel as though I should warn you, I have two current stated goals, and one of them is dying a virgin."

Nojiko snorted, and would have missed a step if I wasn't holding onto her and didn't want to stay on my feet. "Trust me, that can and will be arranged."

"Excellent." I stayed quiet for a moment, focusing on my surroundings, before gracing Nojiko with a sceptical glance from the corner of my eye. "Please don't murder me."

"No promises."


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N:** Launched one of those money things that start with a P that this website apparently doesn't like under the same pen name. That's a thing now.

* * *

"I'm telling you, it's not that bad!"

"'Not that bad' my ass! Fuckin' Cletus Bakery? Café Cletus? Cletus' Burger Bar? Why does the insane hobo have a stranglehold on this entire archipelago's economy?"

Nojiko huffed irritably as another couple whirled past us, leaning in closer than this particular dance really called for. I'm not sure what it was called, but there was a lot of contact that didn't seem absolutely necessary, and more desperation in the air than some of the university parties I'd attended. And let me tell you, the creative writing scene was one of the most desperate I'd ever been a part of.

"They're not all owned by the same person! Sheesh, just try the damn bagel!"

Someone bumped into me from behind. I stumbled forward and grabbed onto Nojiko for support, which somehow led to her being dipped with one leg in the air. There were scattered cheers as I pulled her back up and she led us back into the crowd.

"Are you telling me there's more than one person named Cletus on this island?" I hissed at her. She nodded, looking just as peeved as I felt, and I stared at her in muted horror as someone attempted to cut into our dance and went entirely ignored. "And you want me to eat the food here? Are you crazy!?"

"There's only six families!"

"It's a _surname?_ "

"They're very nice people!"

I cast my eyes upwards and prayed for the strength necessary to get through this. "You know what, fine. They're very nice people, sure. Just so long as there's no Cletus C. Cletus around, I'll be-"

A bleached white head shot up out of the crowd of gyrating hillbilly flesh no less than a metre from us, shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. I swore under my breath and pulled Nojiko down as Cletus' neck whipped about, his head following at a noticeable delay and his eyes wide and wild. "Did the Shark God call for his servant!?"

I shot a very pointed look at Nojiko, and she shot a middle-fingered salute right back. I sneered in response, and together we began an uncomfortable army crawl, away from the line of houses and the party in general.

Recent argument aside, I was actually feeling inordinately grateful to Nojiko. She'd been acting as my shield for the better part of two hours, and her being there as an excuse to field out the attention and praise once it became too uncomfortable was probably the only reason I was, dare I say, enjoying _myself_.

We'd spent most of that time dancing. Apparently, I made for a good partner, what with my not getting tired, and my ability to at least not step all over her no matter the tempo. Half the time I had no idea what I was doing, but dancing itself was something I'd done for fun before, and there wasn't exactly all that much structure in what we were doing anyway. I consolidated myself with the fact that I looked far more attractive than any of the morons around us who had just chosen to thrash like fish that had been yanked out of the water.

Besides, Nojiko seemed to like it, and I owed her big time already. So, we danced, I serenaded her with songs that were so horrendously out of key that I couldn't get through more than one verse before bursting into laughter at myself, and she took me around the village so I could soak up the local culture. It was an alright time, if I could ignore the various people batting their eyelashes at me, and the borderline creepy lines of dialogue that I was being subjected to from all sides.

"Will you sign my soul" and, "Can I make a necklace out of your teeth," and my personal favourite, "Do Shark Gods poop?"

Interesting place.

"Why won't you just try the bagel?" Nojiko climbed to her feet, dragging me along for the ride. I didn't fight her on it, seeing as we'd made it out of the general crowd and behind the foliage running along the path during my musings, but I did snort at her question for what must have been the third time at least. "You've never even heard of the Bakery before, how would you know?"

I rolled my eyes and leaned back against the tree she'd pulled me to, not feeling sorry in the least at driving my elbow into the initials contained within the heart that had been carved into the trunk. Trees, much like love, were only powerful so long as nothing stronger came along. A single push was all it would take to topple either.

"Nojiko, Nojiko, Nojiko…" I shook my head sadly. The somewhat incensed expression on her face, unfortunately for her, was only convincing me to be more of a little shit, as I thrived on the negative emotions of those around me. I fed on their ire, feasting on their irritation to make myself stronger than what they could hope to comprehend. "I don't need to try it, because I know I'm right."

Nojiko raised a single eyebrow. It was a movement so minor, and yet it conveyed so much. Thus, about half of the reason I could actually find amusement in this situation.

"Nojiko, I sustain my own opinions on a combination of spite and a superiority complex I really don't deserve." Nojiko scoffed and crossed her arms. I mirrored her stance, though my reflection of her scowl was a wry grin. "Even if I know I'm incorrect, the only opinion I ultimately care about in the end is my own."

"You know what, I was wrong." Nojiko stepped past me, falling against the tree to my side with a dull _whump_. "You're definitely narcissistic enough to be a lesser deity."

"Some commend that viewpoint, y'know, and others find it self-centred and childish." I stuck my tongue out at her, because that could only help my argument, right? She copied me, and then squawked with indignant rage when I snapped an arm out and caught her tongue between a thumb and index finger. "But then again, what do I care of their opinion?"

She slapped me in the stomach, hard. I ignored it.

"Now, give me something new, and without even looking at it, I can already tell you how I feel about it from experience. Because my opinion, a product of the times I've grown up in, is rigid and resistant to change." The colour of Nojiko's face was really starting to clash with her hair. Odd, seeing as purple and blue usually went well together. At least, I thought so, but I wasn't about to claim to have an eye for that kind of thing. "People think they listen to everyone else, but all they really do is listen to whatever they tell themselves, all the while scorning anything that doesn't originate from within. Even if one tries to understand the other, they're only single examples of viewpoints that are about as diverse as the population of the planet they come from."

Finally, Nojiko figured out I wasn't about to follow her, and stepped around the tree. I let her go, not really keen on the idea of disfiguring someone else on this island, and settled into enjoying the dark look she was giving me for that latest stunt. It did occur to me, in the back of my mind, that I probably didn't know her well enough to be that playful, but I also wasn't going to be on this island much longer, so what did I care when we likely weren't going to see each other ever again?

"You're a dick," she told me, succinctly. I nodded, because she wasn't exactly wrong, now was she?

"Yeah, maybe. Still, I'll never understand how everyone thinks and feels, because it's a fool's errand to try. I keep my mind open in the sense that I allow anything in far enough to be judged from first impressions." I gestured in the direction of the Bakery. It was still within view, and seemed to have already peddled a large amount of its wares to the bottomless pit that was Luffy's stomach. Not surprising, seeing as they'd already run out of meat. "You tell me that this bagel is amazing and that I haven't yet lived if I haven't tried it yet. I can tell you, given the context clues available to me, that not only will I hate this bagel, I will hate it so much that it's better I don't try it in the first place."

Nojiko blinked at me slowly, and then turned to glare at the sky much like I had not two minutes ago. It wasn't the first time she'd done so, and if I had anything to say about it, it wouldn't be the last.

"Maybe I'm correct, maybe I'm incorrect, but in the end, I believe, or at least I convey outwardly that I believe myself to be correct in whatever the current topic may be. I believe myself to be correct because, in my mind, I already know the answer." I shot her a charming grin. I'm pretty sure it made her hate me even more. "I know that attempting to see things from your point of view is futile, as I can only see things as fast as my own brain can process them. How could I possibly double that perception with whatever experience has taught you? Maybe it's possible, but I'm of the opinion that it isn't worth trying, so I won't."

Nojiko rubbed at the bridge of her nose with a thumb and forefinger. It occurred to me, briefly, that we both probably could have had a bagel in the time it took me to preach. "You could have just said you weren't hungry, you know," she grunted, not looking at me.

"I'm not hungry." Her fingers stilled for a second. Trusting her, for whatever reason, to not knock me to the ground while I wasn't looking and then beat the shit out of me, I turned my attention back to the party, or rather, the people within.

Then I brushed my thumb against the bridge of my nose, adjusted the faintly glowing lenses that came to be there so they would actually be useful, and tried again. The difference this time was that I could actually see what was going on.

I watched Zoro and Nami, back from Bell-mère's grave, drinking anyone foolish enough to try their luck against them under the table. I watched Luffy for a moment, as he inhaled whatever edibles were in sight while dancing like a lunatic. My eyes moved to Usopp, who was cutting it up on the dance floor with moves that I couldn't hope to recognise, but they _were_ impressive in an alien sort of way. Johnny and Yosaku were each spinning around with what looked like a twin, which didn't really surprise as much as it probably should have.

Sanji… was hovering near where Nami was seated, serving food. He was going noodly whenever a woman spoke to him, which happened thrice in the few moments I observed him, but he always let them grab a snack from the platter he was carrying before moving on to the next pretty face that could have been hungry. Questions of biology and bone structure aside, I couldn't help the definitely nefarious and borderline evil plot from popping into my mind and taking root.

Time for some _prosperity_.

"Nojiko." Said woman glanced at me from the corner of her eye, "Do you trust me?"

"No," came the immediate response. "I'd sooner trust Nami unsupervised in a bank vault."

"Excellent." I wasn't paying attention. Did she say yes? She probably said yes. I could feel a manic grin beginning to spread across my face, and a puerile giggle erupted from me unheeded. "Lemme ask you a question."

"Oh no."

"We've got a young man, blond and very good looking, who can cook ambrosia like it doesn't mean shit and gets weak-kneed at the mere thought of a pretty woman." Nojiko was looking a bit wary. Probably for the best, all things considered. I tore my glasses away from my face and tossed them to the side, spinning around so I was looking at the party again and clasping my hands behind my back. "How many girls do you think I can set him up with simultaneously?"

" _Oh no._ "

"Good answer!" With that cheer, I set off at a solid bound, leaping over the bushes and diving into the crowd. I appeared out the other side far quicker than I would have thought possible, looking behind me to see that Najiko still hadn't moved from her position near the trees. Ah well, not important. She'd probably come around sooner or later, I could manage until then.

Sanji stiffened as I threw my arm around his shoulders, very nearly dropping the tray he was holding. He didn't, of course; he was a professional.

"Sanji!" I cried joyously. To any outsider, it would look like I was happy to see him. To any insider, mainly Nojiko and myself, it would still look like I was happy to see him. Not gonna lie, I was a bit happy to see him. He was very nice to look at, and sometimes when he wasn't looking, I could steal his ciggies.

Nobody noticed when I dipped my hand into his pocket. Call it a down-payment. He would owe me at least this much.

"What do you want, Shitty Corpse?" He sounded tired. Probably because he'd been moving around all night whenever he wasn't slaving away making all the food. He was such a hard worker. He deserved a break, to relieve some of that stress.

"Nothing much, all's good here and there, you know? _We gon' get you fuckin' laaaaiiiiid…_ " I murmured the last part beneath my breath, steering Sanji away from where Nami was sitting and towards a group of five young ladies. They were sitting at a table that had been set up for the festivities, all of them nursing a colourful drink that I would bet the chef I was steering was responsible for.

"Ladies!" They all turned to look at us. Simultaneously. Fuck, this place was creepy, but at times like this I could _like_ it. "Good evening, or is it morning now? Anyway, hey, hello, my name is Shark God. You've probably heard of me here or there. Enjoying the refreshments?"

"Yes." They all droned together. I squeezed Sanji's shoulder, which had tensed to the point of feeling like stone. Lucky bastard had no idea…

"Well, I have the man who made them right here!" I shoved Sanji forward, sneaking the tray out of his hand in a show of finesse I never knew I possessed and would likely never be able to replicate ever again. "And guess what?" I continued as I set the tray down on a passing man's head. He looked up at me with shining eyes and a crescent scar, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd just baptised someone.

"What?" the lady to the right of the centre asked, her voice flat. Let's call her the Pink One.

"He's _siiiinnngglllleeeeee~~_ "

Slowly, in perfect unison, their gazes shifted until they were fixed on Sanji. Was that hunger in their eyes?

 _Damn_ , I'm good.

 **XxX**

"And it was at that point that Sanji kicked it so hard that it flew into the clouds. When it hit the water again, it caused a tidal wave that wiped three islands off the map. Uninhabited ones, of course."

" _Sunnava…_ I could hear the explosion from the bay."

"And then after that, he made a feast worthy of a King for my eight thousand followers out of a string of seaweed and some sea water!"

"If I'm the Shark God, then Sanji is the food _messiah_."

I clapped Sanji on the shoulder as Nojiko, Usopp, and I all finished our spiels about the greatness that was the wayward Vinsmoke son. Nojiko had [reluctantly] come around a couple of minutes after I'd decided to make today the best day of Sanji's life, and while I'm not entirely sure when Usopp joined the picture, his bullshit was on point and just as unbelievable as ever.

Really, what had started out as an honest attempt to get a multitude of women into Sanji's pants had devolved into a competition for who could lay on the bullshit the thickest. And yet, nobody had gotten up to leave. If anything, the crowd around us was steadily getting _larger_.

I was beginning to have my doubts at this point. No one group of people could really be this clueless, could they? Judging by the stupefied look on Nojiko's face as she surveyed the attentive crowd, she didn't think so either.

"Yes, he's quite amazing, isn't he?" I clapped Sanji on the shoulder, and stood up. He shot me a _look_ from beneath his fringe as I swept Nojiko off her feet, literally, and spun to face the others present. What did it mean? I have no idea. I would probably find out later.

"Usopp, lovely to see you as always." I nodded to the sharpshooter and pretended not to notice the elbow my cargo was driving into my side. So violent after being touched without explicit permission being granted, me oh my. "Have fun ladies! Remember, he has to sail afterwards."

They all blinked at me. Simultaneously. There were enough of them that the wet slap of their eyelids clapping against one another was audible.

 _200%_

"Hold on," I murmured to Nojiko, waiting for her hands to grip onto the arm holding her aloft before moving. I hopped backwards and up, missing the rooftop I'd been aiming for and not quite reaching the next one. I hit the ground with a stumble, bleeding away enough momentum to not hit the brick wall of the house _too_ hard.

"Are you alright?" Nojiko muttered as I set her down, taking a step back to lean against the other house. I twisted this way and that, mainly to make sure that everything was still in its proper position, but also to check out where I'd launched us to.

We'd landed in a sort of alleyway between two houses, running the length of each house. There was enough space for the two of us to stand in front of one another, though I could probably poke her if I reached out. At one end, the end facing towards the village, there was a brick wall about as tall as the houses on either side, made of the same material as they both were, while on the other was a pile of rubble that looked like it was once the exact same thing. With the pockmarked ground and suspicious stains decorating the dirt and either sides of the houses, I could only imagine what this had been used for.

"Meh, I'll live." No, I won't. Hearing a faint _pop_ that sounded infinitely more satisfying than it felt, I forwent the whole standing experience entirely and slumped to the ground, shuffling over to avoid one of the stains as I went. "I am starting to wonder about this place, though. It's starting to feel a bit… I dunno, ridiculous?"

Nojiko huffed out a small laugh and, after a moment of silence, joined me on the ground. I shuffled over a little further as she stretched her legs out, and copied her stance, bringing one knee up to my chest and draping an arm over it. The only difference was that while she could have one leg extended all the way, I had to bend mine slightly at the knee in order to comfortably fit. That was half the reason I usually crossed my legs whenever I sat down in a cramped space. The other half, of course, was to ensure nobody could look up my skirt.

That was sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell.

"None of them have ever been that smart. I mean, except Pashley, but she's only good at getting people into bed." She shrugged, and I had to laugh at that. Not good enough, apparently. "They've never been this… _stupid_ , though. I think they're steadily getting _dumber_."

"Maybe it's because I'm here?" I offered. It was my turn to shrug when one eyebrow ticked up her forehead. "I've seen some cults do some unintelligent shit, and that was without their designated deity being right in front of them. Intense emotion beats out human intellect, and joy and vindication are emotions… I think. Not so sure about vindication, but definitely joy."

Two murky shapes flitted past the rubble that was probably once a wall. We both fell silent as someone giggled and a pair of footsteps became apparent, shortly followed by the crunching of leaves and twigs as the mysterious duo took off further into the forest. It was too dark to see who it was, and I didn't recognise the voice, so I entertained myself by looking up at the stars as their interruption quickly grew too faint to hear.

They were pretty, but so far, nothing had been able to beat the view from the ship, with no light to take away from the experience except for whatever was reflecting off the water.

"…Maybe." Nojiko finally broke the silence. I glanced at her from the corner of my eye, and returned to gazing at the stars a second later. "It can't just be that, though. I mean, nobody knows exactly what the prophecy says, and seeing as nobody was able to even _talk_ about it before you healed that kid, how could they be so sure…?"

"Nobody was allowed to talk about the Shark God?" I snorted. I mean, talk about odd conditions. "That doesn't seem like a very productive rule to follow."

"No, not _allowed_. _Able_. Physically, nobody could talk about the prophecy before you came along."

I'd still been snickering to myself like an asshole when she said that, so I probably deserved the way my head bounced off the uneven wall behind me when I whipped it around to stare at her.

"Why did you not tell me about this before now!?"

She shot me an odd look, her eyes narrowed and her head cocked to the side. "Why would I need to…"

I waited patiently as her eyes suddenly widened, her jaw hanging loose for a moment before she got it working again. "...I just realised that I'm an idiot."

"You don't say!" I leapt to my feet, accidentally crushing something underneath my foot in my haste. I held a hand out to her, and she accepted it, her head hanging low as I dragged her to her feet. "This shit is written down, and you never _told_ me!?"

Her head twitched up, and she glared at me with the usual fire in her eyes. "I'm sorry that you were _just_ unimpressive enough to make me forget all about it!" Her mouth and nose scrunched up, as if she'd just swallowed a lemon, and she continued with a somehow even more annoyed, "also, yes."

"Unimpressive!?" I floundered for a moment as she led me down the alley and through the hole in the wall by our still-joined hands. At least I could take solace in the fact that, this time, she was the one to trip over some rubble, even if she managed to stay on her feet. "We're you just not paying attention to that time when I-"

"IT IS TIME!"

Nojiko actually jumped, while I flinched rather violently backwards and definitely did _not_ shriek as someone to our left screamed almost as soon as we'd left the alley. I spun around, trying to see just who it was and if I would need to run away again, failing to take into account the fact that I was still gripping Nojiko's hand.

Instead of pulling her shoulder out of her socket, as I would have expected, I pulled her backwards into me.

The only problem was that she had actually _jumped_ , and was still in the air. What _should_ have ended with her on her ass and me absconding into the night like a terrified shadow _actually_ ended with her being pulled into my arms, and the two of us looking around wildly for the source of the noise.

Cletus looked as good as he ever had. His wiry hair was sticking up at even more haphazard angles than before, and he was shaking to the point of vibration. Any harder and I would be worried about him drilling a hole through the ground beneath him. He had a stick in his hand, a gnarled old thing fresh from the ground after several rainstorms if I had to guess. There was nobody else with him, thankfully, so I could retain whatever dregs of dignity I had left as I slowly lowered Nojiko back to the ground and cleared my throat.

"Cletus," I greeted as evenly as possible. Nojiko snorted at that, and I didn't even bother looking away from the old man as I reached over and shoved her into the bushes to her side. Her entrance was so smooth that it was like she'd never been there in the first place. "Is there anything I can do for-"

"THE OCEAN BECKONS!" How can such a frail-looking person have lungs like that? It was a mystery for the ages. He waved his stick at me, and I took a step back before he managed to take my damn head off with the thing. "IT IS TIME FOR THE CEREMONY!"

He stood there, panting slightly. His arm was quivering so much that I was genuinely amazed he could still retain his grip on the stick. Unfortunately, I wasn't amazed enough to not instantly feel every ounce of my already lacking courage flee me as soon as the word 'ceremony' finished echoing around us.

"…I'm kind of busy right now. Besides, you know, uh... the stars-" was about as far as I could get before Cletus shuffled past me, hooking his stick around my neck as he went. I stared after him uncomprehendingly for a moment, up until a tug from my throat made me start walking, lest I fall and be dragged. I gurgled with outrage, because it was all I could do, and immediately attempted to dig my heels in. I may as well have been a feather, for all the good it did me. Cletus herded me like a shepherd would a sheep, leading me back around the building and into the main bustle of the party. People cheered once we came into view, parting to allow us through even with my frantic gesturing for them to _stay the fuck put, damn you all!_

Trying to tug my head out of the noose that had been created was pointless, and I abso-fucking-lutely refuse to believe that the stick was strong enough to remain in one piece even with me hammering away at it. And hammer I did, using both hands and at one point, my teeth, in an attempt to break the connection. Nothing I did made Cletus move even an inch.

It was at that moment that I felt something I hadn't been subjected to in a very long time.

Exhaustion.

I just felt… so tired. I couldn't even tell why; it had come out of nowhere, but it was getting harder to even put one foot in front of the other. What started as me pinwheeling my arms ended with me barely able to twitch my finger. I missed a step, and the stick dug into my flesh painfully. It didn't feel at all like wood in that moment, and damn it all if it wasn't _painful_.

"The sea can make even the mightiest God weak!" Cletus' voice may as well have been coming through a film of water. I felt another wave of fatigue that sent me to my knees, and it hit me just before my kneecaps could hit the pavement.

 _"Seastone…"_

Where did he get Seastone? Wasn't it supposed to be rare, or at the very least, regulated?

After that, I was… pitched forward. I'd been falling forward, almost landing on my face, and then I was going through the air with more force than what should have been possible. I didn't even have the luxury of free movement again, there was still a ring around my neck. It was getting hard to exert the energy required to even _blink_.

Pavement, dirt, sand, water, some sort of weird grey shit, it all passed in a flash of colour and blur of motion. I landed with a splash, dashing my back against the stones in the shallows. I went under for a second, though once the water settled, there was no longer enough of it to keep my head submerged.

Whatever was around my neck let out a small _click_ , falling away from my skin a moment later. I rolled out of the water as quickly as I could, moving more on instinct now that I could, rather than with my returning energy because I _should_. What the _fuck_ just happened?

"Call to them, Shark God! CALL TO THEM!"

"Cletus, YOU HILLYBILLY, SHEEP-SHAGGING, SACK OF SH-"

I looked up at where Cletus' voice had come from… and up… and up. I looked past the multicoloured ropes and the massive stands that had been erected, past all the signs that were being held by cheering islanders, and up at the cardboard box that Cletus was sitting behind, with what I could have sworn was a microphone in his hand.

…What.

I pushed at the bridge of my nose, ignored the hubbub that the movement elicited from most of the people around me, and looked again.

…Yep, that was a microphone. And a cardboard box that had 'comentery' scrawled on the side in crayon, but I was a bit more preoccupied with the microphone.

"…eh?"

Honestly, I didn't want to look away. Looking away meant I would then have to look at whatever situation I'd found myself in, and I didn't think I had the strength to do that. Unfortunately, given that I was figuratively flying blind and had been for however long I'd been here, the desperate _urge_ to not look around soon found itself in combat with the overwhelming _need_ to look around.

So thus, with slumped shoulders and a pang in my heart, I glanced around.

The very first thing that caught my attention was the screen. The brilliantly flashy, neon screen that was handily beating the fireworks from before. In the dead of night as we were, you would think that I would have noticed it before now. You would also then be disappointed in me, because not only had I not noticed it, I had been operating under the assumption that this little corner of the world didn't have access to things like _enormous television screens_.

I know. I'm sorry. My mistake.

From what I could see, in the glow of the **_SCREEN_** , I was a stone's throw away from the shore. I probably could have cleared the distance if I took a running leap, or if I wanted to hard enough. The platform I was standing on seemed to be in the middle of capsizing, with more than half of it dipping below the water on one end. The only thing that led me to believe that this was intentional was the fact that it levelled out a bit more towards my end, until there was a good half-metre of flat ground.

On all sides were ropes of every colour I could think of and then some, and out a little further were massive stands that were packed with people. Directly above my head, overlooking all of it, was the **_SCREEN_**.

You know, in all my time as some weird flesh bag, soulless, amalgamate monster of hatred and spite, I had never felt deader inside than I did while watching two animated sharks swim across the **_SCREEN_** , leaving my face and moniker in their place as they went. I think I actually felt something wither up inside me.

The Shark God... I… There was… What?

"The crowd eagerly waits for The Shark God to call on his opponent!" Cletus' voice boomed out from all around me. The **_SCREEN_** rattled against whatever was holding it up there. For a moment, I hoped that it would fall, and somehow kill me.

"My opponent…?" I parroted, almost as an afterthought. I say almost, because it wasn't even that.

Something burst out of the water on the opposite end of the… _ring_. I was still staring at the **_SCREEN_** , so I got a view that was as good as everyone else's as the massive _thing_ thumped down beside me, with what looked like a massive sword in one hand. It looked down at me, its face appearing lopsided in a way, and the realisation dawned on me as I slowly turned away from the **_SCREEN_** and looked into the monster's eyes.

For a moment, we stared at one another. Him with rage unlike anything I had ever seen before, and me with the kind of serenity you can only feel when you have temporarily given up on a spiritual level.

I said the first thing that came to mind. Unsurprisingly, it was something that I would probably live to regret. Not that it mattered, because I was done. Anything I'd said before, anything that had happened to get me to this point, meant nothing to me. I was _done_ with this reality.

"So…" I drawled. Light blue eyes sharpened from a raging tempest to the coldest reaches of the universe at the sound of my voice.

"…how's the kids?"


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N:** This chapter was beta-read by Yeomanaxel. He's got his own story up on this website or on the SpaceBattles forums that he bounced ideas off of me for, _Cifer's Log_. Obviously, I'm going to recommend you check it out.

Also, just as a side note: I hope nobody is actually taking this story super seriously. Because I sure as Hell am not.

* * *

 ** _SPLURCH!_**

 _"And Arlong starts off the match by stabbing his opponent through the heart with Kiribachi!"_

I glanced down at the massive blade that had just gone through my chest, an impressive feat considering the part that had broken skin and bone was the blunt end. The entire thing had gone four blades deep, and I'm pretty sure about half of what used to be in its path was now decorating the ground around me.

Arlong growled down at me, sounding about as intimidating as Luffy's stomach. I saw the muscles in his arms tense, and the spiky stick in his grip begin to shift to the side.

Ahh, I see, the good old bisection method. Oldest trick in the book.

Of course, I didn't really have enough time to deduce that in the moment. I think my thought process was more along the lines of, _'Well, this probably ain't good.'_

My body flashed black, as apparently now was when my Haki decided it would be a good idea to help my dumb ass out. With my top-notch instincts of self-preservation, I decided that trying to get a grip on the murder-rod that was still inside me would be the best idea to continue forward, conveniently forgetting two very important things.

First, I was on the slippery ground. I'm not very sure what the ground was made of, but I knew it was coated in water. Second, this was a competition of strength against a fishman. While on slippery ground. With no traction.

I was trying for a multi-bladed sword. What I ended up getting was a shell of spiritual energy and a ride on the carousel of every little child's nightmare. Or maybe dream; kids can be a bit fucked up sometimes.

 _"Seems it was a good idea for me to hand over Kiribachi after breaking out Arlong! Shame about those Marines, though. Should have done their jobs, they shoulda."_

Well, wasn't that something?

"We can talk about this!" I called to Arlong as he thrashed about, trying to shake me off the end of his sword. I bounced off the stage three times before a vicious flick had me sailing through the air. I hit the ropes, stretched them to their limits, and flew my newly reconstituted flesh right back onto Arlong's sword.

...cough.

If we were going by the noises each of us made at that little development, I wouldn't have been able to tell you who was less pleased with current events. "Come on dude, I've already punched you in the balls! Don't make me hurt you more!"

Arlong turned to me, his eyes somehow simultaneously little pinpricks of light in an eternal abyss of hatred, and bloodshot. I went to push at the bridge of my nose and ended up punching myself in the face due to Arlong's movements, but the end result was what I wanted either way; colour melted away giving me a clear view of the world through my sunglasses. Soulglasses? Hmm, name pending.

 _"And it looks like Arlong thinks about going under the belt, but reconsiders! It's good to know that there's at least one man in the ring!"_

"Cletus, what the _fuck_ is wrong with you!?"

...anyway.

Where before it had been coiled energy, now I could clearly make out the shape of what had attacked me the first time. Three dogs, each about as large as I was in stature, tore across the ground at his heels, each one with multiple ties leading back into Arlong's chest. There was a noticeable red tint that wasn't there before, which I could see flaring with every breath Arlong took.

Another violent jerk had my glasses flying right off my face, shattering into light as soon as they left my skin and dissipating before they could even hit the ground. I stared down at the point where they had disappeared, before turning my face skywards and sighing in dual disappointment and annoyance.

Should have just gotten contact lenses… huh, I wonder…

Arlong shuddered suddenly, drawing my attention back down to him. He was shaking, almost as if the night-time chill was managing to get through the blistering haze of anger. Veins were popping from his forehead and his neck, and his mouth flapped uselessly for a moment, only stopping once he'd pulled both his sword and myself in close and _roared_ in my face. Call me crazy, but I swear I could have heard a trio of howls somewhere in the distance.

Was he actually too _angry_ to even _speak_? I… that's…wow.

 _"Ah shit, it's those werewolves again! Cletus, you get the shotgun while Cletus grabs the silver!"_

As he extended his arm to send me on another ride, something on my belt jingled, sounding almost _innocent_ despite the situation I'd found myself in. I'd been reaching for the sword, Arlong had been about to slam me back into the ground, and together we glanced down to see what had made the noise.

Arlong's jaws clattered with the movement, still attached to my waist. Sitting right beside them, Arlong's nose swung with the breeze, despite the fact that I couldn't feel any wind whatsoever. As we both watched, his detached nose tapped against his detached jaws, making the same jingling sound as before. The air suddenly felt a lot warmer than before. A shudder ran through Arlong's body, and then there was the strangest sensation of a pair of jaws clamping down on the Haki covering my right arm.

Oh, well. Fuck me, I guess.

The exact same thing happened with my left bicep as Arlong raised his sword high above his head, with me still attached to it. He took a step, seeming to shake with the movement, and the jaws loosened slightly before they clamped down once again, harder than the last time. He took another step, heading towards the water, and it was around then that I figured out what he was trying to do.

His Haki was trying to hold me in place long enough for him to get me to the water. Not really a bad plan, especially for someone who was operating and making plans almost entirely on nothing but rage.

Unfortunately for him, my brain occasionally chooses to start working on the level that I like to think is my base average. And wouldn't ya know it?

"Three hundred percent."

Now, Arlong was strong. There was no contesting that, the fishman was strong, in terms of body. In terms of spirit, however, I don't think he was actually aware of what exactly he was using. I'm not sure what was going through his mind, but I'd seen three dogs and was only feeling two. Maybe the third one was hanging back, but that would require there to be a strategy in place. No offense to Arlong, but I don't think he was in the correct mindset to be strategising. Hell, his spiritual energy could have been stronger than mine for all I knew. But even that paled in comparison to the amount of teamwork and trust that my Haki and I had in each other.

No, my arm didn't just try to slap me in the face. Why do you ask?

Three hundred percent, especially while being coated in Haki, was kind of overkill if I'm being honest. I moved my first arm about as easy as could be expected if I wasn't being held down, pushing at the bridge of my nose again just so I could actually see what I was doing. That done, I grabbed the second disembodied head and squeezed.

Arlong froze as his Haki exploded into a cloud of tendrils, his arms slackening and dropping me to the ground. He crashed down a moment later, gasping for breath, his remaining spiritual canines crouching down beside him. My grip held strong as the last of the pack struggled to return to his side, and without giving it proper thought, I formed a ring with my spare thumb and forefinger, placing that hand over my chest right beside where the massive fucking sword had gone in, before shoving the glowing mass right into it.

Hey, if it worked for a boat and some stupid kid, then what right did it have to not work for me?

I didn't immediately feel any different as I climbed to my feet. Maybe a little more full, like something had filled the pit in my stomach, but I'm close to certain that down that path led more madness than I felt I was comfortable with at this very moment in time.

I climbed to my feet, and almost immediately stumbled over one of the many holes my head had punched in the ground when I'd still been in Arlong's grip. The fishman in question was lying flat on his face, gasping for breath, and I slowly began making my way to him as I pulled his sword out of my chest and started breaking it down, one tooth at a time.

"I tried to tell you, didn't I?" I shook my head, throwing the two blades I'd already shattered into the ocean. The crowd, up to that point rather rambunctious, had gone deadly silent. "I told you I didn't want to fight, and now here we are. Why couldn't you just leave well enough alone?"

My voice easily echoed throughout the entire makeshift arena. The only noise contesting it was the crashing of the waves.

Well, the crashing of the waves, and…

 _"It looks like the Shark God is about to finish off his opponent! Children, cover your- hey what's tha-"_

 ** _SPLURCH!_**

I could feel some of the tension leave my body as the blade I'd just pulled apart whipped through the air. Cletus had been going on this entire time, even if I wasn't paying attention to him and couldn't have told you what he was saying if you held a gun to my head.

"False prophet," I called into the now stunned silence. There was a small thump as Cletus slipped off his cardboard box and fell out of his seat. If only it could always be this easy.

I mean, _I_ wasn't planning on finishing off Arlong.

I took a deep breath and cupped my hands around my mouth.

"OI, LUFFY!"

 **XxX**

Luffy kept me waiting for precisely 27 seconds. I know, because I was counting.

In that time, I'd finished dismembering Arlong's sword and flinging the pieces into the ocean around us, and had just finished work on the little ball of Armament that I was gathering in my hand. I turned to greet him as he thumped down and slid to a halt a few feet from me, spinning a fleck of Arlong's Haki into the sphere in my palm before flicking it in his direction.

It landed right beside him, because my aim was incredible, and automatically crawled across the ground towards him. Meh, good enough. He convulsed a little when it touched him and began sinking through his skin, but that was probably all good. Maybe.

"Ca-" I tripped over and would have fallen straight into the water if I didn't catch myself on the rope. Righting myself, I turned back to Luffy, blinking a few times just to make sure this wasn't some sort of optical illusion that was happening due to a reflection coming off the **_SCREEN_**.

I'm still not over that.

Now, the thought had popped up in the back of my mind occasionally, that the longer I stuck around the more likely it would be that I would see some disturbing rubber shit in action. It was basically an inevitability.

However, no amount of thinking about it could have prepared me for _this_.

Luffy had a bone sticking out of his mouth. That in itself wasn't odd, I'd seen that multiple times. What did bother me was the apparent elephant the bone had been a part of, that he had swallowed just before heeding my calls. I felt like I was looking at a raisin sitting on top of a beach ball.

Luffy swallow… he _swallowed_ the bone. The bone. Just went down his throat. I...I… ok. Sure. Whatever. I'm just going to go ahead and mentally check out now.

Fuck me, it was like looking at a piece of fetish fanart. I'm so glad I don't sleep anymore because this shit was the stuff that inspired nightmares.

I'd had a bit of a spiel planned out. Appealing to Luffy's desire to inflict violence on people of other species. Announcing my questionable plans to just let this entire island burn in the hellfire of Arlong's rage because they all deserved it, while my first bounty would be because I'd kidnapped Nojiko and indoctrinated her into the life of a buccaneer, only to die in front of her at a crucial moment and kick off her downward spiral into the worst outlaw known to the world. It was going to be great, and make people question both me and my motivations for years to come.

Instead, I gestured to a slowly recovering Arlong, before flicking my hand in my best silent summation of, 'fuck this shit, I'm out.' Got shit to do, Marines to find and make sure they're alright, Nojiko to find and apologize to for potentially using her face to dig a trench. You know how it is.

Just before I managed to turn away and flee into the night, Luffy's eyes fell on Arlong, and he… changed. One moment I was looking at a beached whale, and I guess that I must have blinked for a few years or something because once the haze lifted, I was looking at a shoot of fucking bamboo.

I think I could hear the demon in his gut screaming with indignation over the use of its gift. Yeah, I was right there along with you, buddy.

It took a few seconds to get my body back in working order. Once I'd managed that, I grabbed the rope, pulling it back until it felt like it could go no further. The plan was to fly, far away from here. Maybe if I was lucky, I'd land in the ocean and end it all.

"Cask."

I froze at Luffy's voice, though I didn't turn around.

"I wanna talk to you later."

For a moment, there was no noise but Arlong's labored breathing. In that moment, I raised my hand and gave a thumbs up over my back, relaxing my other arm and zooming along with the rope as it snapped back into place. Letting go at the last second, I spread my arms and enjoyed the breeze as I-

 ** _CRUNCH!_**

-Slammed face first into the cardboard box that Cletus had been commentating from, which somehow managed to arrest most of the momentum I had. Yeah, you know what? Sure. Sure, why the fuck not?

My legs caught up to my head very quickly, bending my spine in entirely the wrong direction as they flew over me and the box. My face followed eventually, flipping me over the box and down the flight of stairs that were literally directly behind the single chair atop the platform.

Whoever designed this place was fucking insane- oh. Right.

"Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ouch. Ow. Ow." I couldn't even be bothered pretending to care as I bounced down the expanse of stairs. At one point, I landed on my feet and stuck there, before deciding to tilt forward and continue the experience, because why walk when you can give up?

I hit the ground on a roll, bounced a couple of times, somersaulted for the finisher, and ended up standing perfectly upright. I checked down myself, at my flamboyantly morbid shirt and boring jeans, and took a moment to decide that yes, this little part of today had actually worked out.

And then Cletus slammed down on top of me and sent me into a sole pile of dirt.

In that moment, something in my brain snapped. The noise echoed across the beach, drowned out by the cheering coming from the massive stands behind me. I guess Arlong and Luffy were getting into it.

I stood up, and Cletus rolled off me, thumping back down into the sand. Picking him up by the scruff of the neck, I retrieved the blade that I'd thrown at him in the first place. The inconsiderate bastard had gotten it dirty, fucking typical.

"Come on mate!" I tucked him underneath my arm, strolling up the beach and onto the dirt path connecting it to the village. The metal tooth slipped from my grip, and I followed along after it as it bounced towards some of the bushes lining the path. "Let's go make you a shallow grave!"

"Cask, where are you- is that _Cletus?_ "

 _Uh oh, 500%_.

Spinning on my heel, I flicked my arm up and grabbed hold of both of Cletus' legs, completing my pirouette with a heave that sent him flying, over the horizon and off into the ocean. Whirling back around, I met Nami's bemused stare with a grin that may or may not have showcased a few too many teeth.

"Let me answer you with a couple of questions. How much do you care, and how much do you _really_ care?" I clasped my hands behind my back and whistled, willing the Haki covering my arms away. Taking in my expression, Nami slowly dropped her head into a hand, running her fingers up and down the gash splitting her hairline apart.

"You know what... I don't even care about that." Her eyes tracked my foot as I tried unsuccessfully to nudge the massive blade under some bushes, leaving an impressively wide red trail in its wake. Shaking her head, she glanced up at me again, gesturing at the structure behind me. "What is…?"

 _"Fiiiisssshhhmmmaaaaaannnnnnn!"_

You know, I hadn't really been paying too much attention to Nami in the last little while, so I couldn't tell you what exactly it was about the kid that was sprinting up the path towards us, steak knife in hand, that caused her to pull a face quite like that. It was like she'd just taken a bite out of a lemon after watching someone kick a puppy.

It was an interesting transformation to witness, so much so that I entirely forgot to be annoyed with the kid's obviously suicidal tendencies as his little legs pumped him towards the grandstand in the ocean. Ah, to be young or brainwashed so I didn't have to question the grandstand.

With a grin beginning to spread across my face, I watched as Nami's hand shot out, fast enough to be a blur, her fingers wrapping around the kid's collar. Immediately, all of his momentum carried him up into the air, his legs still going through the motions of sprinting and the enraged look on his face just starting to give way to confusion. I bent back slightly to avoid his sailing limbs, and took another step back once Nami completed a full rotation and let out a yell.

"You want to kill a fishman so bad!? **_GO FIND ONE!_** " I think some of the stress that was steadily becoming part of my very being leaked out of my body at the sight of that kid soaring over the moon. He hit the water like a salmon; thrashing about a lot and probably about to get eaten by something much bigger than himself.

There was almost definitely a cloud of steam slowly drifting out of her slightly open mouth as Nami turned back towards me. She stabbed a finger at the grandstand, and my smile dimmed a little bit as I remembered exactly what was going on in there.

"Yeah, that's… uh…" I clicked my fingers twice, searching for the right words to use, before running that same hand through my hair and heaving a sigh through my nose. Ah, fuck it. "Just take a look for yourself, I don't even know how to explain that. I need to find where the Marines parked their… you don't park a ship… ah, fuck it."

Her eyes tracked me as I stepped around her. I raised a hand in farewell, stuffing the other one into my pants pocket. It nudged the jaws and made them clatter, which they knew decided to keep doing with every step I took.

"Cask!"

I paused, having just lowered my hand into my free pocket, and glanced over my shoulder with an eyebrow notched upwards. Nami opened her mouth, twice, shifted on her feet, and finally shook her head.

"Nevermind. I'll tell you later." She turned back to the grandstand and started making her way to the beach, raising an arm of her own and shaking it twice. "Good luck with… whatever it is you do."

"...Thanks?"

She didn't turn around again. I stood there for a few seconds, watching her back in case she felt the need to elaborate, but there hadn't been so much as a glance by the time she hit the sand. With a shrug towards whatever spirits may have been watching over me, I turned back around, quickly scanning across the island for the tall tree that had started it all.

I would need the view if I didn't want to waste time sightseeing.

 **XxX**

It turns out that the Marines had decided to dock on the other side of the island, far away from any of the houses I could see dotting the grounds.

The journey was simple enough, provided that I wouldn't end up caring about any of the wildflowers that may or may not get underfoot. With my apparent reckless disregard for the life of any living being, the choice was more than easy, and within minutes I was sprinting over hills and through forests, course set for the warship that was maybe a bit too big to be considered necessary for these waters.

Then thoughts of the self-proclaimed Dolphin King came to mind, and I was forced to concede the point to myself. Which, technically, still means that I win. So there.

I hopped off the last tree in a sequence that had taken me across more than half the island, my muscles strained to two hundred percent and drenched with Haki. I pawed at my face, bleeding the colour from my vision, and stared up at the huge vessel while sliding to a halt in front of it.

Come to think of it, for all its grandiose size, there wasn't really anything that interesting about it. I mean, sure, it had a lot of sails, and a massive dick hot glued to the front that rivaled its previous captain, but there just wasn't all that much to look at. The Going Merry, while small, had a lot going on and was a joy to the eyes. This just looked kind of uniform, and depressed. Really depressed. Like, how could a boat look so damn sad about being a boat?

I shook my head at it, at all the mopey wood and furled sails, and closed the distance. The hull gave way under my hand when I tried to get a grip on it, crumbling inwards like a hollow cake that had more air than a sponge. The whole damn thing seemed to shudder, far less structurally sound than I would have expected, and I took a step back in order to search for another solution.

A cigarette found its way into my mouth. A quick search through my pockets yielded nothing that could be used to light it, so eventually, I just held my hand over it and commanded my Haki to do something. Soon enough, the buzzsaw-esque noise died down from my fingers, leaving me with a few embers clinging to my cigarette and a trail of smoke twisting through the air.

That would be something to look into later. For now...

One minute and twenty-one seconds later, I was slamming into one of the masts with impressive speed, tumbling right through it and knocking about half of the ship's sails into the water. The entire thing groaned again once I hit the ground, and in between being self-conscious about my body image and making sure my dynamic form of entry hadn't set off a chain reaction that would dump my cursed ass into the ocean, I glanced around the deck for anybody who may have noticed my run-up and subsequent boarding.

Instead of the Marines I'd been expecting, I found…

"Merry?"

Crouched low to the deck, beside the mast that I hadn't just shattered, was our ship's little wayward spirit. Though little wouldn't quite be the correct word anymore, seeing as she'd once again grown when nobody was looking. Her hair and horns were longer than before, and as she stood up and dusted off her raincoat, I could see that she was a bit taller, too. At least as tall as my older sister had been.

I made my way over to her, treading carefully as the deck groaned under my weight. There was a strange dark lump on the floor, whatever it was being what Merry had been crouched over before, and it took me a lot longer than it probably should for me to realise that it was the rough size and shape of a person.

A person who was falling apart, if the flecks and shards of identical colour littering the surrounding deck were any indication. What looked like a large coat was draped over most of their body, and lifting up my glasses to see if I could identify them by sight rendered them invisible to my naked eyes.

As opposed to the light speeds at which my brain usually functioned, I'd figured out exactly what I was looking at before Merry had grabbed my free hand, and before I'd even dropped my glasses back down onto my nose. Her hand was shaking, I quickly realised, and it didn't slow even as I gently wove my fingers through hers. She didn't even react when I began to tug her along, guiding her away from the mast.

The ship spirit on the ground was like me. Empty, a shell with nothing really inside it anymore. There was nothing that remained of it besides a body; it was dead. There was nothing I could do for it, because there was nothing it could do for itself.

And didn't that just bode well for whatever I was about to find on this ship?

I tried leading Merry towards one of the gangplank. There were two, on the port and starboard sides, not that I could tell which was which. I still hadn't bothered to learn or memorise them. She dug her heels into the deck, actually managing to dent the wood inwards, and the same proved true when I tried the other side, as well. Whenever I tried to pick her up, take the choice of staying or leaving away from her, she would push herself away from me and shake her head. Otherwise, she stuck to my side as though she had been stapled there, moving in tandem with my steps as I cautiously made my way across the deck.

She wanted to stay. For what, I couldn't tell you. I still can't; we both knew what we would end up finding. Even so, she wouldn't leave, so after a few minutes I stopped trying to make her. Together, we found a door that would lead us below deck, and descended into the newly ghost ship's remains.

The damage was as extensive as it was baffling. What hadn't seemed to simply erode with time that couldn't possibly have passed had been torn apart. Gouges and slashes decorated the floor, walls, and ceiling, following no discernible pattern or reasoning. Parts of the metal hull had been rusted away, letting small spouts of water in. Every now and then, we would come across a bite mark.

At some point, I'd shifted my glasses, so that I could look over the damage and actually _see_ what I was looking at. Curiously, Merry stayed within my sight.

As far as I could tell, she couldn't really talk, so I didn't bother doing so either. We just explored, me looking for any signs of life, and Merry… I'm not sure what Merry was doing. Coming along for the ride, I guess?

Every room or corridor we found told the same story of impossible aging. The engine was in pieces, wires having been eaten away and metal scorched with the marks of faulty electronics. The kitchen reeked of mold, and a brief glance into the fridge revealed food that was rotting through its containers, despite the fact that the fridge was still working. The sailor's quarters all looked like the bedroom of an abandoned house I'd broken into with a group of friends when I thirteen, the hammocks holding themselves together with nothing but a few connected strings. The bedroom that must have been Nezumi's up until that point was gone entirely, the floor having given way, plunging everything except a single dresser into the relatively shallow waters below.

My cigarette dropped to what was left of that carpeted floor, long since having been puffed down to the filter. I considered reaching for another one, but decided against it. There was no telling what sort of noxious fumes could be in the air. Walking in here with an open flame in the first place had been a pretty stupid idea, actually, what had I been thinking?

Then again, it wasn't like anybody had been around to complain. That was the strangest part about this whole situation; there wasn't anybody around. I won't lie, I'd been expecting bodies. Bloody, gruesome, ravaged, desecrated bodies piled high up the walls with absolutely no regard for the mental health of anybody unfortunate enough to stumble across the scene, or dumb enough to go looking for it.

We hadn't even come across anything that looked like a brig. Granted, to the best of my knowledge we hadn't yet been on the lowest level of the ship, but there wasn't even a single moan in the unnatural stillness. In a society that still displayed public executions, I had my doubts that the prisoner accommodations were all that much to be happy or quiet about.

Instead, there was nothing. Sure, there was a blood stain every now and then, a splash of brown long since dried or a fleck of red dripping from the ceiling, but otherwise there was nothing.

At least, there was nothing until Merry had given a low moan, one of the first noises I'd ever heard her make, and buried her face into my bicep, just short enough to miss my shoulder. We were at the deepest we'd been in the ship by that point, having taken stairs whenever they appeared, all the while stepping around puddles and excessive damage. I'm not entirely sure what we were looking for at that point, or why we hadn't just decided to leave the damn thing alone, but we hadn't.

It didn't feel like we _could_.

"Merry, wha-" I'd been turning to look down at her when I caught a glimpse of it from the corner of my eye. There was a hatch right beside us, one which neither of us had paid any attention to, that was sitting wide open. Innocuous white in colour, we'd almost walked past it completely, and likely would have had I not stopped in that moment, just for a single, horrified second.

There was a dull glow coming from the room, shifting and coiling around itself, fluctuating from bright to dim constantly with every second. The shape in the middle of the room blocked whatever the source of the light was, leaving me with nothing to go on but extraordinarily detailed shadows. From what little I could see, it looked like... a twist of uniforms and multicoloured limbs, sticking out at odd angles with seemingly no rhyme or reason. The entire thing was tall enough to scrape against the ceiling and wide enough to spill out over at at least half of the floor space.

What little I could make out of the floor had several patterns on it, encased in a larger circle that stretched all the way to the doorway. I was reminded uncomfortably of alchemical circles, and the types of shit I had seen them do in anime before.

Curiously, there was also a smaller shape off to the side, what looked to be a fish of some kind. And then, even as I watched, one of the limbs in the shape before us lashed out and scored a deep gash along its side, eliciting a crackling cry-

 _~Those that fall in battle will have life breathed into them once more, to live is to serve for the remainder of eternity…~_

What… where was that voice coming from? And why were those words so familiar?

In that moment, the light intensified for a moment, and I very nearly screamed.

I could understand Merry's hesitance now. After all, even if I didn't have the advantage of smell, she probably still did. And what was inside that room… it was too horrifying to even recall entirely. I didn't want to think about it, I still don't. I'm not writing that down, and I never will. I fucking _refuse_.

Merry shifted on my arm. From the corner of my eye, I could see her face come up, and slowly begin to turn to where I was looking. Without thinking, I threw my hand out at the door, calling forth my Haki to cover it in the same movement. A rope of the stuff, long and thin, shot from the palm of my hand, curling around the handle of the hatch. With a sharp jerk, I slammed it shut, cutting off the view just before Merry could properly focus on it.

I even twisted the lock into position. No chances.

An echoing wail sounded from within. Something scraped at the door from within, denting it outwards in a long, diagonal line. There was another chattering cry, louder than the one prior, and tragically cut short by a quiet, wet gurgle.

Nope. Nope. Should've fucked off long before now. Not entirely sure why we hadn't yet. Nope. Fuck this noise.

"We're leaving." Even if my voice was shaking, I wasn't leaving any room for argument. Merry tried anyway, shaking her head frantically and trying to tug me towards the hatch I'd just closed, but she didn't have any hope of changing my mind on this. There was a point where you had to give up the ghost on the stupid impulses in life, like entering a dark and isolated place at night after hours of complaining about cults. And we'd just overshot that point so much that we'd landed on the fucking moon.

At least we'd found the Marines and the fishmen. Ha… ha… fuck, this was going to haunt me forever.

Merry tugged at my arm again, so hard that her feet scrambled over the slick ground, and I had no trouble in using her own grip to lead her away from the door. The further away we got, the more desperate she got, to the point where I had to actually grip her chin when she went to clamp her teeth down on my arm.

The hatch to the room rattled. Another dent was smacked into it, near the top hinge keeping it in position. Not a second later, the bottom hinge was punched out, coming almost completely apart from the wall with a single blow.

Oh hell, whatever was in there was intelligent.

So, this is kind of random, but you know how people can feel surges of strength in desperate situations, what with adrenaline and everything? Well, turns out Haki is the same, so long as it agrees with you. I mean, maybe you could cut out the middle-man if the Haki is yours to begin with, but in that moment I must have been feeling in tune with everything about myself to count.

When I threw out that rope of Haki again, to reinforce the hatch before I took the chance to throw Merry over my shoulder and fucking run, I could _feel_ what was pulsing through its entire length all the way there.

 ** _The FUCK?_**

Yeah, you're telling me, mate. Just don't pay attention to the fact that you're heading right towards it, we'll be golden. Cheers.

Merry took me about five seconds too long to deal with, even if she was over my shoulder and I was moving after two. I'm not sure what it was in that room that she wanted, but she was as adamant about going in there there as I was about getting the fuck away from there.

Then the Armament that I'd sent out hit the door, was immediately absorbed or something, and I lost that connection that I'd just been feeling. The thing behind the hatch let out the loudest shriek yet, and a second later, the top half of the door buckled forward so far that it was almost touching the ground. The glow within was even brighter now, so much so that I could barely make anything out while staring into it, and… oh, silly me, did I mention Nope?

I feel as though Nope was a very important factor in this equation. Mainly because THE FUCKING THING ATE MY HAKI!

Merry was still struggling, though this time she'd just managed to elbow me in the face. Not now, Merry, I was mourning the loss and assimilation… of my… spiritual energy…

Oh, fucksticks.

I hauled ass out of there so quickly that I'm almost certain we left puffs of smoke in our likenesses. Stairs, stairs, stairs- where the fuck were the stairs!?

I managed to get around two corners before the ringing of metal against metal rang out from behind me, followed by a massive thud. Holy fucking insane cultists, Batman, that thing was loose.

"NOPE!"

Now, if this were a suspenseful chase scene, I would be going around corners at top speed, desperately searching for a way out that was built for someone who had no other options. There would be several instances where I would be cornered, only to either to be saved by Merry or to find a way out that previously hadn't been explored.

Instead, this was a Nope scene.

To my left was a wall. There were no doors running along that side of the corridor that I'd been sprinting down like my afterlife depended on it, though there were plenty on the opposite wall. Taking the chance, I shifted Merry into a position that was less likely to leave her with permanent damage, easily enough now that she had stopped squirming, and called forth my Haki.

I then threw myself to the side, maintaining a good amount of momentum in the change despite the fact that I was now moving sideways, and shouldered right the fuck through that wall.

It was like tearing through a sheet of paper. Hell, going off everything I'd seen so far, the entire ship was about as structurally sound as the papier-mâché volcano I left out in the rain when I was eight. My foot touched down on sand- quite literally, the beach was about level with where I'd broken through the wall, and I continued my mad dash until I was halfway towards the lining of trees.

Now, if I'd ever learned anything from horror movies, it was that you never stop running until you're around other people, all of whom have a whole fuck of a lot of guns. To be fair to myself, and I always am; I wouldn't have stopped running if it were up to me. I would have run until I ran out of island, and then found a way to keep going in that direction.

If Merry hadn't slipped from my grip, I wouldn't have stopped. But she did, and I had to slide to a halt before I dropped her. Even then, I was still sliding against the sand and fighting to stay on my feet when I lifted her off my shoulder. It was only once I'd stopped that her feet touched the ground.

She latched onto me almost instantly, shaking hard enough to displace me. It probably wasn't the best thing to do, all things considered, but excuse me for not really putting all that much thought into my actions when I gently pushed her away so that I had enough room to move.

I crouched down, so her face was just a bit higher than my own, and did my best to offer her a grin that probably looked more like a grimace anyway. Her raincoat hood was up, and pulled down so that even from my angle, I couldn't see her eyes. My hands were on her shoulders, and I was just about to open my mouth to- what? Comfort her? Tell her to charade me an answer as to what the fuck that just was? I don't know, but one of us needed to talk, even if only to break out of the strange atmosphere that had settled.

 _-Click-_

Behind me, from the trees. I'd become very acquainted with that noise in my time here.

"Son of a BITCH!" I shot to my feet and whirled around, placing myself firmly between Merry and where my best bet for the origin of that noise was. Arms spread out, legs apart but still close enough to shield her, and body coated in every drop of Haki that I could get access to in an instant, which was more than anyone was likely to see in this insignificant little corner of the world.

I hadn't been right in my choice of tree, but I'd been close enough. From the corner of my eye, three trees down, I caught a tiny flash. I had to twitch my neck to move my head and get it into my glasses' borders, and once I did, I froze.

I couldn't see the person holding the gun; they were still standing behind the tree, and there was nothing reflective behind them. I could see their weapon, though, and that thing looked _mean_. It wasn't excessive, by any means. In fact, it was small enough to be a handgun, but the intimidation factor was more to do with the fact that the barrel was shaped like a fanged mouth. And unless I was going even more insane, those were flames I could see down it.

It was so far away, too. I shouldn't have been able to hear it from here, not until it fired.

I decided, then and there, that I did not want to get shot by that thing. It leveled out, pointing directly at my chest, and by the time whoever was holding it was pulling the trigger, I was turning around and reaching down.

It didn't quite register in my brain that Merry was the Straw Hat Klabautermann, and it was more than likely nobody other than a crew member could touch or even see her. I mean, I only could because I was always using Haki and cheating my ass off, but like I said, that gun gave me a _bad_ feeling.

 _-BANG-_

Fuck me dead, that was loud!

I dove to the side, taking Merry with me. I landed on my back after twisting around to make sure she didn't hit the ground; she landed on my chest. Overhead, I watched in definition that superseded normal eyesight as the bullet whizzed over us. It would have gone through my throat.

More importantly, it would have gone through Merry's head.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to ponder that before the bullet was hitting the ship we'd just busted out of. You'd think that wasn't all that big a deal, and I would have been right there along with you in that belief, except as soon as it made impact, it exploded.

I'd tilted my head to follow along with it as best I could, which was surprisingly easier than I thought it would be, and it continued right along its path until it made contact with the ship. And then it had exploded.

Only thing is, when I say exploded, what I really mean to say is fucking _atomised_.

It went. It didn't go anywhere, it just went. One second it was there, and the next it just wasn't. It did leave behind a great big ball of fire, though, and that was before it started to expand outwards.

Thankfully enough, the shock wave came first.

I was blown right off the sand by the initial blast. My grip on Merry, haphazard and loose as it had been, was easily torn away. She reached out to me, but we were both already gone, being different weights or having hit different angles, I'm not sure. She went upwards, heading further inland. I bounced along the beach, barely staying away from the massive fireball and its overbearing heat.

Eventually, the propulsion bled away. By that point, I had already reached the trees, many of which had caught fire. I tried digging my hands into the ground to slow down, but I was moving too much to get a good grip or even have enough time to bury a few fingers. I crashed through trees, some of the thickest trunks I'd ever seen this close to one another, and just kept on going.

When I finally slammed into a tree that managed to stay in one piece, I couldn't even see the beach anymore. The sky was still alight with flames, illuminating the clouds and probably suffocating the birds with smoke. I sat there for a moment, slumped against the bark, hearing more than feeling the bones that made up my spine begin to knit themselves back together. The hole in my shirt was closing up as well, which I still didn't understand, and still wasn't going to complain about.

"The fuck am I?" I mumbled to myself, glancing around. The words didn't sound like anything in a language I knew, but I ignored it for the moment, much like most of the times I spoke to myself. My glasses had been knocked from my face during my tumble, not that I would have expected anything different, and I couldn't move my arms to reach my face. Broken bones, maybe? Torn muscles? Who knows.

Not me. And definitely not the guy who was now holding a gun against the side of my head- God fucking damn it.

I sat there in silence, staring at what I could see of the gun through my eyelashes. The clicking of my bones were louder in my ears than the gunshot had been, and maybe, just for a brief moment, I wondered if I would actually survive a shot to the head from that thing.

"Still alive, huh? Can't help but say I'm impressed."

I knew that voice. Fairly certain I'd murdered the owner of it, too. "Ghrresph." I said, outraged, because there was a branch where most of my throat should have been, and I was only just realising this now.

Fuck.

"Arlong was supposed to kill you. That's what usually happens. If not the first time, then the second." The gun slowly dropped from my head, sliding down my face. I caught a glimpse of it as it went by; single shot. It was a single shot, and call me an inexperienced dipshit, but I'm all but certain that it wasn't loaded.

Well, I mean, I was pretty much broken and in the middle of the Buttfuck Nowhere National Park. Not much of a threat, really. At least for the next little while.

"Arlong stabbed you here, didn't he?" The gun tapped against my chest. I couldn't see it, but I could see the arm attached to it, wrinkled and gross as it was. "My, humans are getting more resilient these days…"

This better not be one of those scenarios where you try to bore me to death. Just fucking shoot me already, please.

The arm drifted up, and the gun drifted back into my sight. The bones that made up my spine were still a bit kaput, so when it jabbed me in the middle of the forehead and tilted my head back for me, it was somewhat appreciated.

"Mmsshphg." I argued both intelligently and fairly. Having a branch poking at the back end of your mouth made it difficult for you to be understood, I feel. Such a shame for today's society.

I received a nasty smile in return for that sentiment. And while I had recognised the voice and was well aware who was holding a gun to my head, can I just say that seeing Cletus with his face twisted into an ugly smile was super disturbing? Because seeing Cletus looking like anything other than outright insane was the kind of juxtaposition I just wasn't ready for.

"Who?" He repeated, sounded decades younger than I'd pinned him as. I'd actually been trying to call him a whipped cream and cinnamon cunt, but I guess that works too. "It's quite a difficult story to believe. Perhaps, I should just show you?"

Cletus stepped back, so the arm holding the gun was extended all the way. He tilted my head back a little further, so I didn't have to strain my eyes to see his face properly. That was quite nice of him, though it stopped being so once he grabbed under his chin and pulled.

Flesh is not supposed to do that, Cletus!

Oh good- oh, ew, his mouth just came off. Oh fuck, it's like a mask but it's made of- oh, oh fuck, I think I'm gonna throw up. The bile was probably trying to get around all the wood that was obstructing my throat. Story of my life.

I wanted to close my eyes, but at the same time, this was probably going to be my only chance to watch someone pull their face off. So, against what would likely end up being my better judgement, I kept my eyes open and attentive.

It was funny, really. The face underneath that mask thing had a really pronounced mouth. And no visible nose. And really beady eyes-

 _Oh, you have_ _ **got**_ _to be shitting the fuck out of me._

* * *

 **A/N:** I'll just point out here; this isn't a cross-over.

Doesn't mean some insane shit can't happen, now does it?


	17. Tree Spirit Shark God

Who the fuck did I piss off in a previous life to deserve this? No, seriously, who? Because I'm pretty sure I pissed off a lot of people, and it wasn't like they were all fucking saints.

As I stared upon the horror that was a dolphin head on a Cletus body, I felt something that I hadn't honestly felt in a very long time. As he stared down at me with his stupid charcoal tic-tac eyes and dumb fucking nose, I felt nothing but vague confusion, and the overwhelming urge to cry.

 _Because I was too fucking angry for anything else._

I could barely swear at him, because I was too busy being impaled through the throat. I couldn't punch him, because my body was too busy trying to put itself back together. I couldn't tell you how far I'd rolled or how many objects I'd gone through or when my Haki decided to stop working for me.

And I _knew_ , alright? I _knew_ I wasn't ever what could be described as a good person. I never gave to charities, I never did anything if it meant having to sacrifice something in my life. I was selfish, I was careless, and I hardly ever gave a shit about any life other than my own.

But for fuck sakes, _DOLPHINS._ Why even dolphins!?

"You're amazed, aren't you?" Could I even refer to him as Cletus anymore? This wasn't the Cletus I'd grown to hate and not care for in the least. There wasn't even a Cletus in the first place. I think I was going to miss- actually, no, fuck Cletus. "You can't even say anything while in my presence."

The branch was very clearly still there. I could see it without even looking down. Even if it wasn't, I wouldn't have been very confident in my ability to strings words together in my current state regardless. Instead, I settled on trying to set him on fire with a glare. Maybe if I was lucky and he was flammable, he would trip over and fall onto me, and we could burn together.

"Come now." Drats, it wasn't working. "Surely you never truly believed you could defeat a race as noble and ancient as mine, did you?"

My eyes snapped open, and I tried shaking my head frantically even though I was being held in place by the branch and lack of structural integrity in my skeleton. Now, I was too horrified to bother with anger. No backstory, not while I was pinned down and unable to cover my ears or swear vigorously. No backstory!

"It was so long ago, when we were forced underwater…"

 _Fucker._

The monstrosity wearing Cletus' body, which, come to think of it, I preferred to the Cletus I had once known, tapped my forehead with its pistol and gave me what could have been a grin. Its mouth kind of just flopped open and a sparkle that looked like a lit fuse entered its eyes.

"Yes, quite right." We were probably thinking vastly different things. My head flopped back down once the gun was removed, the branch against my chin stopping me just short of being able to shield my eyes from view with my hair. In front of me, the boots disappeared, retreating what sounded like a few steps before the thing in front of me chuckled.

"To think, the whole fate of Siurdfjkssjnndkkseew kind would fall to my shoulders on a day like this…"

 ** _Crunch. Thud._**

Of course the branch pinning me to the tree would choose that moment to snap. It only took me applying the smallest amount of pressure in a fruitless attempt to slam my face into the ground, eat my way through the dirt, and never stop until I took up my rightful place in Hell. I got about as far as slamming my face on the ground before stopping, which was a damn shame, because I could really go for some fire and brimstone right about now.

…Wait, did I just face-fault? Was that something working out in my favour because I finally conformed to the expectations of the medium?

...Fucking physics, man, how does it work?

"I was just a hatchling when it happened-"

"You're still talking?" My words were muffled by the ground, and my arms were moving a bit slower than I was hoping they would to prop me up, but I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised that my voice was the first thing to come back to me. Limbs? Nah, fuck 'em, I'm nothing if I'm not talking shit.

After much scrambling about the ground, I managed to get enough of a grip to push my face off the floor. There was dirt in my goatee, acid in my heart, and desire in my eyes.

"Give me the gun," I said, very calmly. It was the type of calm that only came about with apathy, and it was a type of calm that I knew quite well.

The dolphin growled at me, sounding like a pair of maracas, and shoved the gun into my face. I mean, technically it was what I'd asked for, but I had hands. It didn't have to go up my nose, I could hold it just fine with them.

"You dare try to order me around?" _Pull it. Pull the trigger. Come on, don't make me wait._ "You ruined _everything_. The King will need his new body soon, and just setting things up takes _years. Years_ of my life are gone, thanks to y-"

The bones in my hand chose that moment to finally fully click into place.

It was entirely too gratifying, lashing out and grabbing the dolphin by the goofy looking face. His teeth clicked together, and he barely got any thrashes in before I had dragged him into the dirt, my eyes _veeery_ wide and doing their level best to stare into his soul.

We were laying side by side in the middle of a forest, staring into each other's eyes with only the stars above for light. The far-off stadium was our background music. All that was missing was the picnic basket, and the shovel that would come into use later.

Was this a moment? Was I having a moment with a dolphin?

Mmm, probably not.

"Listen to me very, _very_ carefully, you fish-huffing, midget, delphinidae wanker. I've been on this island for less than a day, and I could already fill out half a novel with the shit that has happened to me. I've already killed an old man. Why am I fine with that? Why didn't he stay dead!?" I tugged the dolphin closer, abrupt enough to jerk it out of the human body it had been occupying. Alright, as far as I could tell, this was a mostly regular dolphin. No abominable shit within sight.

"Of course I survived your attempt on my life!" The dolphin didn't seem to mind how much I was shaking him back and forth. Technically, he wasn't even holding the gun anymore, Cletus was. "The Siurdfjkssjnndkkseew are a proud race of warriors!"

"Stop using words that aren't even words!" I shook him around a little bit, fully enjoying the range, height, weight, and likely intelligence advantage I had from being human. You know, the race that Siurdfjkss-whatsitsfuck wishes they were. Ooh, I went there.

Then it clicked. The gun, that is. Not any sort of bright idea. I was wrestling a dolphin in the middle of the forest after pulling it out of an old man suit. I'm pretty sure an oil field would be a more appropriate environment for sparks.

We both froze. I'd been shaking the dolphin back and forth, and the dolphin had been putting in modest effort to release itself. In unison, we turned to the side, watching the flesh suit that used to be Cletus slide slowly down the tree trunk it had stumbled into. The fancy pistol was on the ground beside it, just begging to be used.

I looked at the dolphin. The dolphin slapped me in the face and lunged for the gun.

"Oh no you fuckin' don't!" Now, watching a dolphin try to get up on its hind flippers and sprint across the ground was up there with the funniest things I've ever seen. Unfortunately, this was not a moment of good humour, so when it fell over sideways and I grabbed it by the dorsal fin on the way down, I wasn't overtly concerned with the comedic value in shoving it to the ground hard enough to bury the entirety of its snout into the ground.

My legs weren't as there as I had been hoping they would be, but clawing my way across the ground was hardly the most difficult thing I'd done today. "Just one bullet…" I was muttering to myself, grabbing a nearby stick and using it to paddle the rest of the way. "All I need is one bullet…"

"Mmmfff phhmfmmf!" The dolphin made a very good point. I completely ignored it.

"It vaporised a ship, maybe it can do it again… Dolphin tech, don't fail me now!"

In all honesty, I'm not sure I was entirely… there, during all of this. I may have said something other than what is documented here, but let it be known that I was well and truly done with what this world had to offer. This was the East Blue, right? What horrors awaited me on the Grand Line?

Yeah, no.

I swiped the gun off the ground and gave it a once-over, looking for a trigger or a handle or something that would make things go boom. "Maybe they'll let me try again, somewhere more suitable for me. Or maybe they'll drop me for all eternity, never existing in the first place can't be _too_ bad, can it? Come on baby, I just want _out…_ "

"Mpphhhffffddd Siurdfjkssjnndkkseew!" It was a bit sad that the dolphin's delusions of grandeur could still be pronounced correctly through a solid foot of dirt and grass and probably bugs too. Regardless, I still ignored him.

 ** _Scritch._**

"Hah hah ha ha!" There was a small panel near the back of the barrel, hooked in a way that resembled a dolphin's fin. I looped my finger around it, feeling it pull back slightly under the force. Something clicked, something else whirred, and with a victorious grin spreading across my face, I held the gun up to my temple.

Second smartest species in the world my ass. I figured out your murder methods in less time than it took you to dig your face out of the ground! Ha ha-!

 ** _Click._**

Ha- oh, you wouldn't be so cruel.

 ** _Click._**

Alright, well, maybe if I went a little slower this time-!

 ** _Click._**

Maybe if I pulled it like I meant it?

 ** _Click._**

...Please?

 ** _CRACK._**

Half of the gun fell down near my feet. The other half, the half that was still in my hand, followed soon after. My fingers were suddenly too numb to support its weight. Yet another option, taken from me.

My neck crackled like a microwave full of utensils when I turned my head to stare at the Siurdfjkssjnndkkseew. He'd pulled his face out of the ground, finally, and had one fin extended. There was an orb of light on the end, though it quickly faded from view once he lowered his limb.

"You will not end you! The true extent of the Shark God's influence is too complex to be understood or discussed by humanity, not even by the Shark God himself!" He pushed himself up to his full height. If I got a good run-up, I could use his head for a penalty shot. "I have been around for several of your lifetimes, and I will remain for dozens more! The blood of the young shall feed the old! The only one who is allowed the honour of ending you is me!"

It was at that point that my mind went blank. A sort of ringing filled my ears, and-

 _Please note that the following section has been censored for reasons such as: Holy shit what the fuck why would I do that me no_

 **XxX**

I will be the first person to tell you that I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.

It was a common occurrence during that one Summer job. The last time I'd gone fishing and had lost the hired rod to the dark depths, the words had barely managed to leave my mouth. The first time I'd ever driven a car, everyone had figured that out very quickly. Probably shouldn't have been moving before that realisation was reached, but that's beside the point.

I very rarely have any fucking idea what I'm doing. If I do have any idea what I'm doing at any given time, somebody is probably getting severely injured. Some days, it seemed the only way everyone could remain safe was if I remained clueless until the end of time.

As I sat perched in my new home and looked out upon the expanses of my very own Hillbilly Hell, I had much time to think. Hours passed me by, night bleeding into morning, morning shifting to day. The last of the partiers finally dropped to the ground in exhaustion, only to spring back to their feet a few hours later, when the sun was high in the sky, and resume their celebrations.

It was kind of inspirational, in a way. For the longest time, these people hadn't really had anything to call their own. No money, barely any homes. They'd been surviving on community alone, and even that had been dwindling for those last few days.

And then in a day, an hour, a _minute_ , that had all changed for them. And that was _me_. Granted, it really shouldn't have been me, and I'd done it mostly on accident, but that had been _me_.

And here I was now, cursing myself for not leaving them to their own devices. I mean, they would have been fine regardless, probably, but my first and largest mistake was getting involved in the first place.

I didn't want to deal with espionage in the form of dolphins. I'd been joking when I said that it was my dream to make them extinct, but now I was embroiled in some kind of war with them. I'd accidentally started a war with a secret race of underwater _things_ that looked like dolphins, which had technology advanced far beyond anything I'd yet to see in this world, and... alchemy? Fucking _alchemy?_

Was this someone's idea of a sick joke? Because I can tell you right now, I wasn't going to be laughing. Dolphins, are you serious? Sounds like something _I_ would come up with.

I had to laugh at that thought. Fuck me, I would rather shoot myself in the face than try to exist in any world that _I_ had come up with. I could see it now - me going mad with the power that I would eventually grant myself as more and more loopholes were opened up and abused. It would only end once I'd either placed myself in charge of everything or once I'd blown up the entire planet, and that was basically the same outcome in the end.

It could be fun, you never know. Still, there wouldn't be any fucking _dolphins_.

But I digress.

After finding a source of water to clean all the yuck off my hands, I'd gone for a bit of a walk through the many small villages that were on this island. Cocoyashi was the biggest, as far as I could tell. It was just a couple of hours of looking around, dodging around people who were unconscious and people who were well on their way.

It was more a case of my body wanting to move, and my mind not having a good reason to say no. It was still a bit preoccupied with everything that had happened, the boat and the dolphin and Cletus. _Who_ was Cletus?

I'd asked around when I could, trying my luck whenever I (sometimes literally) stumbled across someone who was still awake. The responses I got were typically one of two lines; "Who is Cletus?" or, "Shark God I love you." It was like the guy never existed, but the impact he'd had on this place did.

Absolutely everything I knew about Science Fiction was telling me that this was all just a chunk of backstory that the main character slowly uncovers long after everyone who was present for it had died. Even the shopfronts had changed, with every mention of the name Cletus having been scrubbed clean in exchange for things that seemed to fit the geography a bit better.

I'd be lying if I said I cared enough to remember what they actually were. Either way, I saw much of the island that morning, as I searched for the hidden cameras that were broadcasting my reactions back home for children to laugh at. I also searched for some of the people that I actually knew, even if only to see them and reaffirm to myself that this was all somewhat real.

It wasn't as difficult to believe as the monster I'd seen between islands, but it felt like it was ingrained deeper. We'd been in the Calm Belt in the end; that was near enough to the Grand Line to entertain the possibility that we'd taken a wrong current somewhere and ended up close enough to the ocean of madness to experience a group hallucination. Unlikely, with Nami's skills in navigation, but not impossible.

Having this type of shit happen in the East Blue wasn't something I would have expected. For all I didn't know about this world, I at least knew _that_.

The first place I checked along was the beach that I'd run from the previous night, and I didn't even need to set foot on it to see that it was trashed. Parts of the **_SCREEN_** were scattered up and down the shore, interspersed with the stadium seating and just about everyone who had been present for the match. Luffy was lying on his back atop a pile of empty plates, snoring without a care in the world. His massively inflated gut jiggled with every movement.

There was also a note tied up in the flesh of his forehead, with a shark tooth acting as a bow. I pushed at the bridge of my nose, and tilted my head to the side slightly so I could read all about how three guys named 'Chew, Kuroobi, and me' took Arlong away after he passed out underwater, and that they were all going to put some more thought into their futures. Oh, and also the Shark God being a human was something they'd never thought possible. It was then signed off by a Hatchan, who included a P.S to apologise to Nami and congratulate her on making such high-ranking friends.

Figures the only lead I would have into figuring this shit out would be in the one place I really couldn't follow.

I found Zoro a little bit further up the beach, still cuddling a bottle to his chest. Nami was right beside him, laid out elegantly on one of the seats that must have been torn out of the massive structure. It didn't look comfortable, but she didn't seem to mind all that much. Johnny and Yosaku were sprawled all over each other a few metres away - I wonder what they had been doing before they fell asleep?

Ooh, scandelous.

Sanji was nowhere to be seen. Seeing as I'd covered basically all the ground I could think to cover, chances were he was inside one of the many houses, or underwater, either wrapped up in a rug or chained to a cinderblock. Meh, either way he was fucked. Mission accomplished.

Not like the man couldn't swim while tied to concrete, anyway.

Usopp, being the clever boy he is, had decided to crash on the Going Merry. I'd decided to search for it after remembered that Merry had been with me when I went onto the Marine ship, trying to ascertain if it was at least still above water when the hunt for her Klabautermann proved fruitless. Everything about it looked alright, no damage anywhere I could see, so I figured that with the Marine ship gone and her corporeal body (as it were) still fine, she was probably alright.

After that, I decided to find a tree.

Trees were my forte. Trees were where I felt most comfortable. Trees didn't make stupid noises, or need to be fed, or try to talk. Trees just did their tree things, and when I was in a tree, I could just do 'in a tree' things.

Nobody had to be what everyone else wanted them to be in a tree. They could be a child, looking out over their kingdom from the rickety reaches of their favourite branch. Trees were one of the few places that I could look down from, and not feel like I _needed_ to own anything and everything if I ever wanted to earn my pride.

Eventually, I arrived at one of the grander trees on the island. It was further to one side, not exactly surrounded by anything else. I couldn't recall seeing it before I'd started looking for it, but I was hardly the most attentive person at the best of times.

If the hole I'd found near the top was any indication, the owls around these parts had the wingspan of an albatross. Oh well, not complaining, this was my new home now. They could all fuck right off.

The hollow in the trunk was actually quite comfortable. It was curved in a way that suited my spine, and had just enough space for me to stand up and still be able to see outside. It even had pieces of wood bending inwards so I could support myself like a human. The sun hovering out above the horizon was beautiful, the glare in my eyes almost enough to blind me to the simmering rage that bubbled beneath the surface every time I looked down at the collections of houses below.

Almost.

 _Almost._

Alas, my desired transformation into a tree spirit would have to wait, for silence was not to be for eternity. At some point in time, I'd gotten kind of bored and started counting seconds, and the moment I hit 5640, a hand appeared in my view. I made my displeasure known by not changing my facial expression at all and keeping completely still when it grabbed hold of my nose, and as a blue head of hair popped up to block the sun, its owner glanced up at the few higher branches that remained and panted.

There were a few leaves stuck in her hair. That was another thing of note; despite the abundance of leaves and branches this tree had, the hollow I'd found a perfect view. A creepily perfect view, now that I thought about it...

"Always the damn trees, known the moron for a _day_ and he's already the biggest pain in the ass-" Nojiko was grumbling to herself, glancing down for a foothold or to gauge how high up she was or for any other number of reasons, when she caught sight of my face.

I'd like to make it perfectly clear that the hole I was squeezed into was about the same size as my head. It had been a bit of a bitch to get into, true, but the inside had plenty of space for the compact collection of unintelligence that was my body and, as previously mentioned, was at the perfect height to allow me to look out if I so pleased.

In essence, all anybody could see of me, from any angle, was my face. My excessively attractive and unamused face.

Nojiko's eyes went quite wide in the time it took her brain to register what she was seeing. I waited for her patiently, silently wondering how the fuck she knew which tree I was in. Unless she'd spent her time climbing all the trees she came across, in which case, why. Just why.

She blinked, her mouth opening and closing silently. I'm pretty sure I've seen those exact same movements on a goldfish before.

"...Cask?" She finally managed. Personally, I was impressed she managed to keep a hold of the tree during all that time. It was fairly windy up here, and I knew from my experience getting up this high that the two fingers currently digging into my nose were the only good hold she had. How strong was this woman? "...What are you doing?"

 _I have no fucking idea._

"I'm a plant person now," I informed her calmly, as I was obviously quite sure with this new direction that my life would be taking. My voice came out garbled and nasally, due to the vice-grip that was currently around my nose, and the noise seemed to be enough to snap Nojiko out of whatever reverie I'd managed to put her into this time.

She groaned, and rubbed at her eyes with her free hand. "Get out of the tree," she said, her voice flat and her eyes still covered.

"No. Plant people don't have to deal with the Siurdfjkssjnndkkseew." That almost sounded like an actual word when I said it with my nose blocked. I was also completely making this shit up as I went along, but I feel as though that was a common theme right about now anyway, so I'd get over it. "Go away or I'll curse your crops."

"Cask, you're not actually a God." Shit! I forgot this one was actually intelligent! "Nami warned me, should have listened…" Nojiko shook her her head, and then lowered her hand to fix me with a stern glare. How she managed to maintain that expression while a few hundred metres up in the air and twisting my nose off my face was anyone's guess, but personally, I think a few solid hours in my presence had desensitised her a bit. Constant exposure was supposed to be good for something like that, wasn't it?

Slowly, she pointed down, towards the branch beneath her.

"Get out of the tree." She repeated, being sure to pronounce every syllable. The wind picked up for a moment, blowing her hair around her head and actually succeeding in making her look the least bit intimidating.

I raised an eyebrow at her, the silent challenge clear, and rolled my eyes to the side in a deliberate and exaggerated motion. She was close enough that I _felt_ more than _saw_ her bristle.

 _"Cask."_

"Get out of the tree…" I murmured in falsetto, setting my jaw and grumbling through clenched teeth. "No. Screw you. I'm the _Shark God,_ I do what I want. Why don't you get _into_ the tree…"

I continued to mumble under my breath, the wind blowing my hair back into my eyes whenever I moved the slightest amount in any direction. The tree groaned, I'm assuming due to the excess of weight that was inside of it. It would stand tall, though, I had faith-

"Fine. Move over."

-That I had selected a healthy, strong speci- wait, what?

"Excu-mmphf!" I was going to spin my neck around to emphasise the sarcasm in my tone, as that was the only option available to me, but the motion was cut off when Nojiko grabbed me by the _face_ and used that grip to push me to the side. My head clunked into the side of the tree, with enough force to shatter the thin mask of wood. Nojiko, the heartless bitch, wedged her foot into the small space provided, slipping it around my shoulder and sinking up to her thigh.

"Your problem is you're not used to people sinking to your level." In a show of athleticism that I would never have come to expect from a tangerine saleswoman, Nojiko twisted herself further into my little hollow, pushing me further and further to the side. I probably _could_ have stopped her if I tried, but to tell the truth, I was a bit dumbfounded, and more than curious as to how far she would actually _go_ when directly challenged.

Plus, even if I wasn't looking for any particular reason, the way her body twisted into my space was mesmerising. Like watching a time-lapse of a structure being built, or the way a delicate object shattered to pieces in slow motion.

All too soon - or maybe not soon enough, I'm not sure which - she had joined me in the trunk, somehow undermining one of the most basic laws of physics as she made herself comfortable in the space that before had barely been able to contain me. She then looked up at me, and cocked an eyebrow with the exact same expression that I had given her.

"...Alright, fine. I'm impressed." I tried to push myself off the side of the tree a little bit, but the unfortunate side effect of being in a confined space with another person is that there's no fucking room. The unfortunate side effect of being me was also something to consider, as there was nothing that could convince me that Murphy _didn't_ follow me around with a paddle and a camera for blackmail material.

The smug expression melted off Nojiko's face when I completely overestimated the amount of space I would have if I moved. She squeaked, and I withdrew my hips to the farthest reaches of the tree.

"Was that-?" Nojiko began, her eyes wide. She raised her hand, flexing her fingers in front of her face. With both of us in here, the lighting wasn't great, but I could clearly make out her face going red.

"Don't you have any friends to spend the day with?" I cleared my throat and turned to look out the hole that my head had punched through the tree. And if I angled my body towards it as well, who was going to call me out on it?

Well, at least now I wasn't dwelling. May have assaulted a woman in a tree, or vice-versa, but hey, at least I finally had dolphins out of my mind.

"Maybe I just missed you," Nojiko made to cross her arms, jerking away when her forearm brushed against my shirt. I think she may have hit her elbow on the other side of the tree, if the hollow thud and hiss of pain were anything to go by.

I turned back to her, just to make sure she could see how unamused I was. It would have worked, too, if she was actually looking in my direction. Ah well, not like I could really blame her right now.

"Bullshit. I live my life in a constant state of making sure people never miss me." At least, that's what I told myself, for my sake if nobody else's. Nojiko shot me a glance at that one, and I did what she couldn't before, crossing my arms and giving them a little jiggle just to make absolute sure that she knew what I had done and why I had done it. "And I refuse to believe that you're here because you wanted to climb a tree."

Another gust of wind hit the tree. The entire thing creaked, and for a moment, I was worried that it would fall. Instinctively, I sent Haki out through my feet in an attempt to coat the trunk down to its root and keep it in place, but that plan failed when I lost connection to it just before it could get to the roots. My arms unlinked, ready to grab onto anything in case I would need to, but just as I was getting prepared to bust through my newest home and ride it all the way to the ocean, it stopped.

...Thanks, environment, for that input. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Nojiko glanced up at my face, then at my arms that were still folded over my chest. Her eyes than began to descend further, before she let out a small cough and averted her gaze back to her side of the tree.

Damn it, not another one.

"We don't get much bitter sarcasm here. Maybe I'm just trying to enjoy the variety before it sails away."

I could help but laugh as Nojiko turned her nose up at the side of the tree.

"Oh, that is low." I flicked at a piece of bark that was sticking a bit out of the tree, opening up another small hole in the trunk. I wasn't really paying attention to anything at the moment, but even then I could still feel the breeze on my skin. I couldn't hear it, though, which was decidedly odd. "That's how it's gonna be? Really? You come into my tree, touch me in inappropriate places, and now you're going to guilt trip me into doing what you want? Have you no shame?"

"I have my doubts that you feel guilt," she muttered. Unfortunately for her, given how close in proximity we were with each other, I heard her perfectly clearly.

Well, only one thing for it, really.

"Zheekeehihihihi!" When was the last time I'd been in a genuinely good mood? Not just feeling elated over one stimuli or another, but an actual good mood? I couldn't tell you, but I was definitely feeling pretty happy right about now. I hadn't even noticed the anger I'd been carrying about with me for the last few hours dropping away until it was gone entirely.

Honestly, I think at some point in time, my mind had been broken. It was a decent enough explanation, the only one I had, really.

But you know what?

"Eh, fuck it!" With one motion, I extended my arm, punching clean through the tree trunk. Immediately, half of the tree above us fell away, and the other half was torn apart by the wild winds that I hadn't noticed picking up. Placing my hands on the trunk, I pulled my legs up in between them, hopping onto one of the closer branches that still allowed me to see over the trunk.

"Oi, Nojiko!" Said woman was still looking a bit bewildered by the sudden wind. Grasping her frozen hand in mine, I lifted her out of the trunk, placing her down on the branch beside me. I didn't let go of her hand, because in this weather, I wouldn't be surprised if one of us were to fall off. "Wanna go get that bagel!?"

"What?" I couldn't tell if she couldn't hear me over the wind, or if she was still trying to wrap her head around my abrupt shift in mood.

It was quite simple, really.

Did I feel guilt? No, not particularly. I was feeling confused, and irritated, and more than a little angry at times, but never guilty. Did I feel guilty that I knew nothing of what was going on? No, what was I supposed to do about it? I'd already vowed to kill all dolphins, pipe dream as that may have been. Where was I supposed to go from there, when I had no leads in any one direction?

So, no, I didn't feel guilty. So why was I acting like I was?

Wow, dealing with me was a chore.

"I've just come to an important realisation!" I shouted over the wind, crouching down on the branch. Nojiko followed me, untangling her hand from mine and laying it on my shoulder to keep me from wobbling over the edge.

"There's whole villages out there, that worship me enough to throw a massive party!" I spread my arms wide, gesturing to all the houses we could see underneath the cover of the leaves. "I've tried thinking about this place, but there's no reference that I can possibly use! I've never come across something like this before and called it reality! There's no point trying to live towards some sort of future that I can't even see!"

The grip on my shoulder was suddenly a lot tighter. I turned to Nojiko, so she could see me rolling my eyes.

"Not like that, idiot!" I stood back up, dragging Nojiko with me with her own grip on my shoulder. This time it was my turn to steady her when she stumbled into me, catching herself on my shirt and looking up at me like I was insane. She wasn't exactly wrong.

"I can't plan for the future, and I'm probably not dying anytime soon." Every time I tried just made me feel like the target of some demented gag. "So, fuck it. I'll just find something I can plan for, and live in the moment for everything else!"

Nojiko opened her mouth, and my grin widened when all she could do was shake her head. "There's something wrong with you!" She called over the wind, taking her hand back and placing it on her hip.

She was still smiling, though.

"Definitely!" I gave her a small salute, before tipping myself over the edge. I hit the branch below us with enough force to almost tear it right off the tree, cupping my hands around my mouth as I went.

"Race ya!"


	18. True Story

"And on her ceiling, BOOM! Massive poster of me!"

Nojiko snorted, doing her best to laugh around the last bite of my bagel. She ended up failing and choking on what was in her mouth, holding up a hand when I moved to slap her on the back.

"Hang-urk- hang on!" Shoulders still shaking, she managed to gulp everything down, switching between coughing and laughing every other gasp. I settled back in my chair, playing with the complimentary glass of water I'd been given and twirling one of my [unlit] stolen cigarettes around with my lips while I waited her fit out.

"You-you can't actually be serious!?" she spluttered after a moment, banging a fist on the table for whatever reason. Maybe it was to substitute the laughter she couldn't partake in at the moment, maybe it was righteous indignation.

"I warned you at the start of the story that she was insane." I felt a bit like a cartoon character, biting down on the cigarette and taking it with me when I grinned, but damn if it didn't fit the situation. The sight must have set Nojiko off again, as she crumpled onto the table with shaking shoulders and explosive breaths.

It was a welcome sight, considering the two of us were practically running on fumes to keep anything continuing. For all their beauty, the Conomi Islands really didn't have all that much in the form of entertainment.

To be fair, the green wind that surrounded us on our way down the tree was as kickass as it was strange, and the people passed out in every single position and location imaginable would never stop being funny. Why was that man halfway through an empty window plane? How did that child get down that well? Where the fuck was Sanji?

No, seriously, where the fuck was Sanji?

...Meh, he'd show up eventually. Maybe he'd bring the WiFi password with him from another island or something. Nojiko and I had only gone around this one, mainly because she didn't have a boat readily available after the whole 'Arlong' thing and while I was confident that I would figure out how to run on water one day, I'd rather not do it without the supervision of someone who would be able to pull me out without drowning themselves.

So, I'd done another circuit of the island, this time with a companion in tow. I saw a few more things, mainly a few hidey-holes that I'd not seen underneath bushes or around shrubbery, all of which were piled high with all sorts of weaponry. Granted, the guns all looked a bit less than single-shot and the blades were made more of rust than metal, but that just meant that the Fishmen would eventually die a slow and painful death of infection once they were stabbed, which ultimately meant that they would suffer more, and thus lose. Humanity, superior yet again.

Oh, and I also saw the tangerine orchard up close for the first time. Dunno why I'd been avoiding it for this long. There were sacks filled with money all over the damn place. There was also a sack filled with mouse-eared onesies, and another five stuffed to near bursting point with a multitude of cheese types. Like, if there was a 'that's a lot of cheese' level amount of cheese, what I had now was somewhere around 'holy fucking shit, have all of these seriously been discovered?'

As an aside, I was also wearing a mouse-eared onesie. Well, they were more like long coats, because I was currently privy to far too much movement for this to be a onesie. I would say that I had no regrets, but that would imply that I had done or experienced something that I should have regretted, and that simply was not true.

There were a lot of bags under those trees, which lead to a couple questions when I started looking through the ones that had an arrow drawn on the side in what I could only assume was black paint. Nojiko seemed remarkably chill after I mentioned it was payment for punching some guy's head off, nobody all that important.

 _"Ah, right. Which head?"_

Yep, there was a reason I was keeping her around.

After that, there had been a tour of the Going Merry, figuratively and literally stumbling across a few more pieces of the **_SCREEN_** as we went. I lugged my bags, all eight of them, along for the short trip, leaving Nami's where they were in the dirt and grass. No way I was gonna chance touching them, she could figure her own shit out.

Usopp was awake by the time we got there, and gave me a nod that looked like it was on the cusp of a bow. He handled the Merry tour while I stashed my loot and everything else I didn't feel like lugging around any longer in the same room as I had Krieg's body.

Which was missing.

You know what, fuck it. I had my doubts that anyone would care. I didn't, not really. At least the armour had been left behind. It was kind of just sitting up against the wall, in the exact same position that it had been in when there was a flesh and bones body occupying it.

Dolphins? Probably dolphins. Moving on.

The Merry tour had lasted for about half an hour, far longer than what I had been expecting. Usopp was probably busy spinning a tale about every little thing he could see. I didn't really mind all that much, seeing as it gave me more than enough time to catch up with my one true love.

 _"I missed you," the words were barely audible in the light sea breeze as I stroked the length of the rigging, trailing the tips of my fingers around every coil of rope. "You always treat me so much better than any of those… bastard trees… kyaa~█████"_

 **I can neither confirm nor deny these allegations.**

...The fu… I… huh...?

...And so that led us to here, sitting atop the balcony out the back of the bakery, looking out over a portion of the beach while Nojiko ate my bagel because I wasn't really all that hungry and I couldn't really eat it anyway _why did I order this again-_

There wasn't really all that much to do other than think and talk. I didn't feel like thinking, not after it had consistently failed me, so I went in the other direction; delving into my plethora of embarrassing, entertaining, and sometimes illegal tales from when I was younger and stupider, and much, _much_ less attractive. Dark times, dark times indeed.

That is, if those times even existed at all. I still wasn't all that convinced that I wasn't just some Frankenstein creation that never existed before coming into being on that island. Maybe none of this was real. Maybe the machines had already taken over.

...What was I talking about again? Oh, right.

Nojiko still hadn't quite managed to regain her breath, but I decided to continue regardless. She was strong, she could survive my first story.

"After that, her sister walks in the room. I'm lying on her bed, with my own belt tied around my ankles and my pants around my knees. I've got a lady about half my size and a year older than me pinning me down, and a strip of tape over my mouth. We both look over to her, and she's holding a bottle of whiskey and three paper cups in her hands."

While it wasn't quite hacking up a lung, Nojiko's renewed laughter had a certain raspy edge to it. "I'll bet she was," she gasped out, pounding on the table softly at the mental image I was constructing.

I leaned back in my chair, ignoring the mouse ear that fell in front of my eye as I crossed my arms.

"While I'm busy looking at the doorway and trying to beg for help, which is far easier to do without industrial strength tape in the way, I'll have you know, the first girl brings out the furry handcuffs and gets one of my wrists attached to the bedpost."

For a moment, there was silence.

After that moment-

"AAAHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Birds flew from their perches in the trees surrounding us, startled by the _howl_ that Nojiko had just let out. I chuckled at the memory as well, because no matter how disturbing it had been in the moment, it was just too damn funny in hindsight. That, and the fact that her reaction was more or less identical to what I received the last time I'd told this story.

"Her sister downed that entire bottle in about ten seconds, right there in the doorway. It was pretty damn impressive." I brushed the ear out of my face while Nojiko slipped off the table with a short yelp. She hit the ground, and all was quiet for a second, before she continued right on laughing. "You alright?"

A single, wavering hand popped up over the table, flashing me a thumbs up. I cleared my throat as it sank back down, staring at one of the trees in the distance as I recalled what happened next.

"Anyway, her sister just stood there for a moment, staring at us. Then the bottle and cups have been dropped, she stumbles into the room, and vomits right into my shoes. I had to throw them out afterwards." Shame, too. I liked that pair. "When she collapsed, she almost landed on one of the candles. She didn't, though, just in the puddle of vomit. That splash was phenomenal."

 _"It keeps getting worse…"_ came the breathy, almost pained voice from the floor on the other side of the table.

"You want worse?" I couldn't help but cackle, because the ending was undoubtedly the best part of this particular nightmare, and I would relish in the horrific memories until the day I re-died. "That's when her mother came running in, screaming that she'd set the kitchen on fire again."

Silence. I couldn't even hear the wind.

"Think of this poor woman for a moment. To start off with, she's raised a psycho and has had to set it free in the world so it could get an education. Somehow, this daughter of hers makes a friend, and manages to get that friend over to their house." For all the faults of her daughter, that woman had been lovely for the short amount of time that I'd known her. Of course, all signs indicated she was a bit of a monster too behind closed doors, but those doors remained closed when I was around, so I could be a bit annoyed with myself that I couldn't even remember any of their names.

I think the older sister had been something starting with R?

"She decides to cook a nice dinner for this dumbass boy, who looks like he could eat more food than her entire family combined. Despite her best efforts, she manages to set the kitchen on fire, _again_ , and when she rushes to warn her family about it, what does she find?"

I ran a finger along one of the whiskers on my onesie, chuckling a bit despite myself.

"She finds that same boy with his pants down and his belt wrapped around his own ankles, handcuffed to a bed that's sitting in the middle of a pentagram of candles, with her youngest daughter sitting on top of him while throwing away a key that has pink fur on one end, and her eldest face down in a puddle of puke." I shrugged, despite the fact that nobody was there to see it happen, and propped my arm up on the table so I could support my head with my hand. "And that's about the time that we all figure out that at least one person in that room worships the Devil."

A quivering hand emerged over the edge of the table, slowly followed by an entire arm. It clambered down beside the cutlery, and Nojiko pulled herself up in short, unsteady bursts of movements. Her face was red, her shoulders still heaving, and the crash when she fell back into her chair almost made me worry that she had broken either it or her ass.

 ** _Thunk!_** Her head slammed onto the table, making everything jump a millimetre to the side. She rocked her head back and forth, though unlike the last time her face had been introduced to her empty plate, she managed to remain in her seat and not plummet back to the ground.

"Wha-at i-is your li-i-ife-h?" I think she was crying, rocking her head back and forth. Her arms slid off the table, clutching at her sides as she alternated between coughs of laughter and hiccups.

 _Soulless, unnatural, doomed, comedy of errors,_ all of these came to mind and more. In the end, after a few seconds had passed and I couldn't honestly be bothered to give it all that much consideration, I just shrugged and slumped even further into my seat.

"An adventure." That got me another round of hacking laughs. My shoulders jumped a few times; there wasn't any air left in my lungs to actually laugh along with her. I slouched forward against the table, sliding Nojiko's fork away from her head before she could roll over on top of it, and gave it a quick glance.

Half of the handle shone black for a moment, before the Haki retreated back into my fingertips. I frowned at it, pushing at the bridge of my nose with my free hand. All colour in the world bled away, except for the blazing blue soul belonging to the woman in front of me. With a push, I sent the waiting Armament back into the utensil.

The Haki stopped at about the same place as it had stopped before, losing momentum until it was gaining in the opposite direction. With another push of that muscle I couldn't hope to name or even envision, another wave of Armament surged upwards, covering the entirety of the fork and rendering it invulnerable for the time being.

Sweeping it up off the table, I turned it over in my palm. I could see the various dents and scrapes in the metal through the slight, maybe even microscopic dips in my Armament covering, though they were being smoothed over almost as quickly as I could notice them. The rest of the Haki was even, spreading across the surface to where it was needed, all the while keeping a consistent height of a fraction of a fraction of a millimetre off the fork in any given direction.

"What is that?" I almost jumped, so caught up looking at the fork that I'd almost entirely forgotten that I was sharing a table. Peeling the glasses off my face, I dropped them to the side and glanced at the fork again, somewhat irritated now that the tines were visibly silver. Doing things better when acting impulsively as opposed to actually planning things through, while mostly my style of approach for anything in life or death, was fucking annoying when I actually wanted to learn _how_ to do things impulsively.

"Hmm?" I hummed, trying to force the Haki back into position. It didn't work.

"That thing that you do occasionally, what even is it?" Nojiko was still a bit red in the face. If I had a camera or my phone on me, I would have snapped a picture of her breathless state, with the healthy splash of woods to one side and the joviality of an occupied beach on the other. It could be used for a postcard, or something. "I figure it's got to do with a Devil Fruit, seeing as they're apparently real, but none of your crew could really tell me about it. They couldn't tell me much about you at all, actually…"

"My, my, asking around for information about me, are you?" I prodded lightly, before letting out a small gasp and tapping the corner of my lips with two fingers. "Goodness gracious; when phrased like that, it almost sounds somewhat _scandalous_."

She just gave me a blank stare. I tried to match her, but quickly grew bored and conceded.

"Fine, fine… It's called Haki, unless you were talking about the glasses. Those are because I ate the Lens-Lens Fruit… or so I was told." I swished my fingers back and and forth over my palm, and I won't lie; I was a bit ecstatic to see the fork following them and doing a slow twirl upon a black carpet of soul. "I wish I could tell you more than that, but I only know what I'm doing _maybe_ a sixteenth of the time I'm using them. It's a learning experience."

"You've already told me about the Haki." Nojiko shook her head at me. "It didn't make much sense the first time around either."

"Wait, I did?" I cast my eyes skyward, trying to replay through all my time that I'd known her. For some reason, I saw a lot of trees. "When did I do that?"

"You don't remember? How could you forget? It was back when… uhh…" Nojiko's eyes flicked over my face a few times, before slowly climbing to the sky much like mine had done. I think she was trying to be subtle about it, but it didn't really work out too well for her. "...Huh. When _did_ you do that?"

"I don't know. When _did_ I do that?"

"I _don't know_. WHEN _did_ you _DO_ that?"

Alright, this conversation was beginning to crash. Time for a totally natural segue into something that would flow much better than this currently was. With all the grace of a socially awkward nutcase, I pointed over Nojiko's shoulder, and said in a voice as enthusiastic as I could muster, "Look! A puppy!"

Hopefully that wasn't as monotone as it sounded to my ears. Nojiko perked up in her seat and turned around instantly, eyes combing over the beach for the dog that I had pointed out. It wasn't hard to see, playing with a child in one of the dunes, looking very much like what Arlong's Haki had when I… stole some of it… _Liiiiiightbulb._

Alright, this was probably a bad idea. I had nothing to suggest that it was a bad idea beyond the fact that I apparently lived in a cartoon, but every idea I'd had up to this point had been a bad idea, so it only seemed fitting to stick to the theme.

But I was going to do it anyway.

"Sooo…" In a voice that was less convincing than a child actor on cable television, I drew the single syllable out, leaning over to make out the look of utter glee on Nojiko's face. "...You like dogs?"

"We only have a few on the islands." The child that was playing with the dog was bowled over when it slammed full-tilt into him. I joined Nojiko in grinning like an idiot while he attempted to dig his head out of the sand. "There used to be a lot more, but…"

"Did you ever have one?" I'd been trying to steer away from that topic, which of course meant that I would step right into it with absolutely no forethought because I'm a damn fool.

"Yes." Nojiko answered without pause. Her eyes were still on the dog, even if the smile on her face wasn't glowing quite as bright. "It was a small, fluffy thing that I had when I was young. Before I met Nami and Bell-mère." Her face dropped, just a little bit. "I never found out what happened to it after we were taken in. I don't even remember its name."

"Good. Great, even." Nojiko slowly turned back to me. Her stare was flatter than the Calm Belt. I sent her a disarming smile that did approximately jack and shit, reaching up with an unnecessary flourish to tap at my face with a Haki-coated finger. "I'm going to try something I've never even thought about doing before, and now I have the proper motivation to do it!"

My smile didn't waver in the face of Nojiko's skepticism, remaining strong even as she planted an elbow on the table and propped her chin up with a hand. "This happens often, doesn't it?"

"You could say it is my life's story." Then again, how many times could I really say that I was going to try to manipulate the soul bits that I'd stolen from someone on a whim? I mean, of all the things I'd stolen on a whim, this was definitely up there for the position of oddest. Right up there with half a deck chair. To this day I still don't know how I only ended up with half.

The first step would actually be getting them all into my sight. I stared at my hand, covered in Armament as it usually was, glowering down at it and accidentally on purpose ignoring whatever Nojiko had just said. _Oi,_ I wanted to say, but settled on thinking it really hard instead. No need to advertise the fact that I was a few newspaper clippings away from a grammatically correct ransom note, or however that saying went. _Start flowing, I need to find something in there._

I could almost hear the profanity echoing through my bones, but the Haki acquiesced to my demands, moving in a sluggish river along my skin and muscles. Barely a second later, my enhanced eyesight picked up on the discolouration that was little more than a dot of orange in an otherwise colourless pool.

Don't you just love it when things work out?

...Now what.

Uhm… did Devil Fruits run off the principle of intent, or was I thinking of something entirely different? With the kind of shrug that someone who had no other leads would do, I conveyed my desire for the small fleck of orange soul to travel down the length of my index finger, linking the middle finger and thumb of my other hand into a small circle.

Alright, my thinking went like so; Arlong's Haki took the shape of a dog already. Thereby and thusly, so long as I figured out a way to manifest it, the shape and characteristics would already be present. Basically, I was pulling this shit out of thin air as I went, because I could think of nothing better to do with my time.

What can I say, it felt familiar.

"Lens Lens… uh…" What was a good name for what I wanted to do? Focus? Nah, too boring. Breath? As in breath of life… that could be a tentative no. 'Lens Lens take some of this shit and sprinkle a little of that on it to make life because why the fuck not' didn't exactly roll off the tongue… wait a second.

"Lens Lens Victory!" Yeah, that's right, I'm cultured and shit. Alright, no, that's a lie, but I knew enough to at least make that reference.

The little circle of spare space between my thumb and middle finger shone for a moment, the glow dying down until it was almost translucent. It was like the skin of a bubble, though when I lay a finger against it to go through with my plan, it felt about as solid as the table we were sitting at.

Laughing openly at my own brilliance, I sent the small fleck of orange haki through the lens among a flood of colourless spirit power-

Then I blinked. When my eyes opened again, all of the Haki that had been coating my arm was gone, and there was orange blob about the size of a teaspoon thrashing about weakly on top of the table.

It gave one last whiny, rasping breath, before falling completely still. A single, half-formed eye stared up at me with betrayal that I'd only ever seen from a dolphin.

Just to add insult to injury, the fucking thing chose that moment to pop and cover my face in… I dunno, soul puss? I huffed some air out of my nose. Two orbs of orange expanded out like bubblegum, spreading the mess down to my lap when they too popped.

The lens had faded from my hand before I moved it, wiping the gunk away from my eyes with my thumb. Nojiko came back into view, albeit through a veil of what could be described as amber cellophane, where she proceeded to raise an eyebrow and lazily flash me a victory sign once she realised I could see again.

Hmm, she had the same smirk as Nami. I… don't know how I didn't notice that before now.

"So… Lens Lens Hubris?"

I very maturely gave her the finger. While doing so, I took the chance to examine my arm.

The...the entire thing had been drained of Haki. The skin, the muscles, even the bones; they all felt lighter, missing a weight that I'd never even noticed had been there in the first place. Even my finger, my trusty finger of Armament that had never left me before, was gone.

Where had I gone wrong? Haki was beginning to crawl up my arm now, slower than I'd seen it move in a long time. It looked the same, it felt the same, but it was almost like there wasn't _enough._

I was under no illusions when it came to what this body was capable of; I had no fucking clue. I didn't know where to begin when it came to Haki. The Devil Fruit was a crapshoot all on its own. I'd be hard-pressed to refer to the muscles as human.

Science had never been my forte or passion, that had always been the creative arts. I didn't know formulas, or names, and most of the equations I'd been taught in high school had long since left my memory. I had no idea how to document, and I certainly didn't know where to begin experimentation. The day I got access to the equipment for that would be the day that I sold myself to that scientist guy, Las Vegas, or whatever his name was.

All I had to go off was eyeball and feeling. And a few wild ideas here and there.

Obviously, I hadn't used enough Haki. Usually, the process for actually making it was passive, pulling it apart and waiting for it to fill in the gaps. It was kind of like a muscle, in that regard, but not being able to replicate something that Arlong could do without even realising it was a bit embarrassing. Fuck his status, I wasn't the one bested by a single punch!

Did the density of the Haki make any difference? Was it because I was trying to replicate Conquerors while using Armament as a starting point? Did I have the wrong idea when it came to what my Fruit was capable of?

No. No, I wouldn't fall into that trap. No bad or useless Devil Fruits, only bad or useless users. That was something I'd seen tossed around a fair bit back home. And really, enhancing sight with glasses lenses, filtering spiritual energy through two very different beings, _stealing Conquerors Haki?_ Compared to that last one, this little endeavour was downright tame.

...Fuck me, that stupid tomato was _unfair._ What else could it do? How far could the lenses reach? Were they affected by gravity, did they weigh _anything?_

Damn it, too many questions. I'd need to find somewhere to write all this down… aannd I'd been sitting here, staring at my arm for a very long time, completely ignoring everything that was being said to me.

Uncrossing my eyes, I spared one last glance at my arm now that I was actually _looking_ at it, seeing it covered in Haki. Before, I probably would have pat myself on the back at the achievement, but now that I knew it was basically nothing in comparison to a veteran from the Grand Line? Expected, yes, but it still stung.

Lens Lens Hubris, indeed.

"You say something?"

Nojiko tried to discretely rid herself of the fork that she'd been about to poke my face with. I say _tried,_ because there wasn't all that much discreet about one flicking something over their shoulder and embedding it in the bannister one was sitting beside.

"...Smooth."

Nojiko's eyebrows furrowed, her mouth open to shoot off a retort. Before she could say anything, however…

 _"Caaaaaaassssssskkkkk!"_

I sighed, pushing my chair out and standing up. "Fve hundred percent."

The muscles in my arm did their thing, managing to not grind my bones or tear themselves apart on account of my (pitiful) Haki seasoning. That done, I stuck that same arm out, catching Luffy around one ankle as he skimmed over Nojiko's head by the slimmest of margins. The rest of his body continued on for a moment, thankfully bleeding enough momentum to stop before he slammed into anything that he would have to pay for. By which I mean _I_ would have to pay for, by virtue of being the only person on the crew who ever seemed to have any money aside from Nami.

"How are ya, Cap'n?" I could have asked him why he was flying uncontrollably through the air, but after everything else that had happened on this island, this wasn't really all that odd. Not nearly odd enough to warrant any concern, at least.

"Oh, hi Cask! I found you!" Luffy didn't seem too bothered by his current position. It probably helped that I was holding my hand high enough for him to actually have room to swing. And swing he did, pointing a finger right into my face after curling in on himself so much that it probably wouldn't have been a possible movement if he wasn't made of rubber. "Stop fighting Captains!"

I hoisted him a little higher, finding some amusement in the way his finger remained perfectly in place even as the rest of his body moved. There was a bit of a pout on Luffy's face, but I didn't need my glasses in order to see the seriousness there.

I sighed once more, and turned around to face Nojiko again. Luffy swung with me, his hand still managing to stay perfectly on target. "Nojiko…?"

"Straw Hat business, got it." Her chair scraped across the wooden floorboards as she pushed herself to her feet, taking a brief moment to stretch and smother a yawn behind her hand. "I'm going to go catch up on some sleep. See you at the party tonight?"

"Sure thing." I raised my free hand in a brief wave while Nojiko bumped her chair in with her hip and prepared to vault over the balcony. It wasn't too far from the ground, certainly not a large enough distance to hurt her. "Cheers, babe."

Nojiko's foot caught the bannister when she faltered on her jump, making her flop gracelessly off the balcony with a short yelp. A second later, I heard a soft thump, followed by an even softer, _"prick"_.

I held in my laughter like a champion, turning back down to Luffy to deal with whatever he had to throw at me. The smile slipped from my face once I realised that Luffy was steadily crawling away from me, his body elongating as he slithered across the ground like a snake towards the door leading down into the bakery.

The gleam in his eyes and the grin on his face were both downright _disturbing._

Right. Walk and talk it was.

 **XxX**

After a few minutes of me apologising to the owner of the bakery, the owner of the bakery assuring me that it was the least he could do for the prophesied God and his trusty Straw Hat, and Luffy unapologetically making his way through every pastry he could find with even the smallest fleck of meat on them, we went on our way.

Say what you will about the Conomi Islands, but they sure did have a surplus of dirt roads with nothing profoundly interesting on either side. In fact, they were so uniform in appearance that I wouldn't have been able to tell you if I'd been on it before then or not.

Luffy was giving me no indication that he knew where we were going either, but I'm fairly sure I shouldn't have expected anything less. Something about a certain direction feeling colder? I don't know.

"So no fighting Captains, huh?" I repeated, once we were a decent distance away from the village. I'm not sure what I would have called my tone; 'dead' would be the closest comparison I could think of. I was hardly curious, and subtlety in the face of Monkey D. Luffy was a lost cause. Plus, there was no chance of what he was about to say not happening, so yes, you could say that I was fairly adept at all things dead.

"Un?" Luffy tilted his neck to look up me from around his elbow, his fingers intertwined behind his head. His eyes then lit up in understanding before he nodded, looking very pleased with himself. "Oh. Yep, no more fighting Captains."

I could feel my eyebrow rising on its own accord. "Care to elabo… go into a bit more detail than that?"

Now Luffy looked confused, dropping his arms back to his side. "Captains fight Captains," he said in such a way that it made me feel a bit like a slow child. I mean, he didn't have to rub it in!

"That's not what elaborate means, Luffy." I stuffed my hands into my pockets, the slightest hint of annoyance shining through despite my best efforts; there may have been a lot of things I didn't like, but being told what I could and couldn't do was definitely up there. We walked a few more steps down the path before Luffy stopped without warning, and it took me another couple of strides to realise he wasn't beside me anymore.

When I turned back to see where he was, I saw him staring into the sky, his eyebrows furrowed and his bottom lip between his teeth.

"I'm the Captain, so that means that when we get into a fight with another crew, it's my job to fight the Captain." Luffy spoke slowly, like he wasn't used to putting that much thought behind his words. Not that I was trying to sound like a jackass, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. He nodded at his own words, a smile on his face once more when he tilted his head back down to face me. "Even if they're not the strongest, they're still the one in charge. They're the one trying to become King of the Pirates... are you trying to find One Piece, Cask?"

And there was the small, pouty frown again. The edge of my lips tilted up, annoyance all but forgotten.

"Can't say that I am, Cap'n."

Luffy crossed his arms and nodded once again, more conclusively than before. "Then it's not your job to fight the Captain of a crew."

The way he said it was so childish and simple, I shouldn't have found it so easy to agree with him. But, for whatever reason that got Luffy so far into his journey into the first place, I did. I stood there, with my hands in my pockets, and laughed openly along with the rapidly shifting atmosphere surrounding us.

"Zheekeehihihihi… alright, alright." I turned back around, my shoulders still shaking slightly, and continued on down the path. Simple, quick, using fewer words than what should have been necessary, I guess that was my Captain. The sounds of someone scrambling behind me were my background music as I sobered, the smile that had gotten stuck to my face only dimming somewhat with the absence of my mirth.

Soon enough, it would have to fade, and as was depressing reality for as long as I could remember, it did as soon as something occurred to me.

"Luffy." I got a quiet, "hmm?" in response as I took a step to the side, so I could lean against a tree and cross my arms. Luffy stopped as well, tilting his head back to look at me and making it that much harder to believe that I was currently talking to the strongest person on this island.

"I will promise you, right now, that I won't take the first swing at anyone, _if_ I'm already aware that they're the Captain of another pirate crew. I've got nothing to swear it on right now, but I will swear it."

I stopped to take a breath, running a hand through my hair to push away the strands that the wind had blown into my eyes. Luffy watched me silently, electing to stand still and hear me out.

"However, I will tell you right now that if it ever looks like anybody on the crew has gotten in over their heads, then Captain or not, I _will_ step in." I held up a hand to stall any incoming protests, not that I knew if I would get any. Better to be prepared. "I don't care what the fight is about, or how personal it ends up being. If I think it's necessary, I will step in, and I will do my part to _end_ it." I sought his gaze, giving him the hardest glare I could manage. I'd like to think that it was pretty impactful, even if Luffy didn't even bat an eyelash. "I don't care about the consequences. _That_ is my promise to you."

I wasn't sure what to expect. An argument, probably. Definitely not Luffy pulling his eyelid down and sticking his tongue out at me almost before I'd even finished talking.

"Fine! Then I'll get strong enough that you don't need to step in!"

And just like a hammer slamming down on an egg, my composure shattered and spread its gooey, viscous, delicious insides out all over the ground.

I laughed, long and hard, even circumventing the odd noise that would usually come out of my mouth whenever I found something humourous since coming here. Over the din I was making, I could hear Luffy snickering along with me, but for the most part it was lost to my tirade.

What was I feeling in that moment? Well, let's see. Incredulity, for one, that this was the man who would become King of the Pirates. Irritation, that he could shrug off my declaration that I'd come with, which was pretty damn good for something thought up on the spot, might I add! And… oh, yes. Relief.

Relief, for having someone around who could challenge my world-view so easily. That was a nice feeling to have, to know that there was someone else who didn't care, and went about it in such a way that it could keep me from drowning in my own angst.

For all that I hated myself for what I was, I could at least love Luffy for everything that made him… well, him.

I guess that's why so many people looked up to him.

"Heh… haaa…" I shook my head, sucking in a lungful of oxygen now that I'd gotten control of myself back. I was still leaning against my tree, miraculously not on the ground like Luffy was, and I couldn't help but shake my head at it all. "Fuck me, this island has been an adventure. You alright, Cap'n?"

Luffy sent me a D-shaped grin and a thumbs up, still lying on his back after his own laughter had laid him out. I rolled my eyes at him, marching over and hauling him back to his feet with the efficiency of something who'd had to do this many times. The joys of having siblings much smaller and far more stubborn than you.

"Always figured I'd lose it eventually…" I murmured under my breath. Luffy swung in my grip for a moment before I figured out what I had done wrong and lowered him to a height where his feet could touch the ground. "Has anyone told you recently how good a Captain you are, Cap'n?"

"Hmm… nope!" Luffy flashed his sunny grin at me. Damn thing was infectious. "Usually everyone just hits me!"

Oh, you poor dipshit.

"Well, you're the best damn Captain we could ever ask for, and don't you forget it." My expression softened, maybe. It didn't do that very often, so I'm not sure what the symptoms were. Rush of affection and slackening of facial muscles? Yeah, sure, maybe. "How are you going, by the way? After The Baratie and everything?"

Luffy frowned at me. It wasn't the deep frown I'd been expecting, just a slight downwards tilt of his lips. He looked confused, and that was only reinforced when he scrunched his nose and narrowed his eyes.

"The Baratie?" He repeated slowly, "isn't that where Sanji lived?"

Oh, you doubly-poor dipshit.

"Yes, that place. How are you going after what I told you?"

Luffy just gave me a blank look. My mind whirling and stalling all at once, which is a fucking bizarre sensation I'll have you know, I looked Luffy dead in the eyes, all my mirth once again gone.

"Luffy, what's the most significant thing you remember me saying to you while we were at The Baratie? Think towards the end of our stay."

The lines going across Luffy's forehead looked almost deep enough to reach his skull. After a moment, he brightened again, and then put on a deep voice that would have sounded insulting if it were to come from anyone else.

 _"Luffy, I swear to all that is fucking Holy that if you ask for meat one more fucking time, I will tear your scrawny fucking head right off that fucking toothpick you call a neck, grind up your fucking body to make a fucking bolognese sauce fucking topping, and feed it to your motherfucking hat."_

"...Well, that sounds like me." I muttered to myself, before shaking my head. "Alright, first off, please never repeat that when other people are around. I don't feel like being crucified. Second…" I trailed off upon realising that Luffy had a hand in the air, as though this was a class. "Yes?"

"Did Krieg ask for meat?"

"I…" Shit, did he? "...Possibly. Not important right now. Luffy, can you do something for me?"

My ever faithful Captain tilted his head to the side like a curious puppy, then nodded.

"I need to talk to someone, but I'd rather be alone to do it. I can tell you, though, that if you find Sanji, it's very possible that he'll be in a good enough mood to make some food. Maybe even with meat in-"

"MEEEEAAAAAAAATTT!"

Luffy took off back towards the village fast enough to leave an afterimage behind. I closed my eyes at the shower of dirt and grass that was sprayed up in his wake, my head snapping back a little bit each time a piece of gravel smacked into my forehead.

Once the storm finally stopped, which took far longer than I'd been expecting, I slowly opened one eye to check my surroundings. There was no Luffy in sight, only two craters where his feet had been before my declaration. There were also a couple of busted trees, which were teetering dangerously on what was left of their trunks. How Luffy figured out that the village was in that direction when the path continuously wound this way and that was just another mystery of the ages.

Much like the strange inconsistencies in memory that everyone around me seemed to be developing at the most _convenient_ of times. Once was accidental, twice was coincidence, and the third time didn't fucking matter when divine intervention wasn't only _possible_ , but a _prior factor._

I nudged my nose so my glasses would flash into place before taking a quick look around me. There wasn't anybody that I could see, which either meant that I was alone, or they were so good at hiding within hearing distance of me that they deserved to know what was going on. Even so, I stepped to the edge of the path and pushed my way through the bushes, disappearing amongst the trees for the umpteenth time since landing on this island.

It took a few minutes, but eventually I reached a clearing of sorts, barely a few metres across. It was small, but it would do for now.

Now I just had to approach this with politeness and maturity befitting my status as a legal adult.

"Oi, dickhead." I flicked my index finger, where my Haki had first started. "I wanna talk to you."

 _Perfect._

* * *

 **A/N:** That story at the beginning is true, by the way.


	19. Chapter 19

I stood in that clearing for at least a minute, waiting to see what would happen. I would have held my breath if I had any air in my lungs to begin with, my arm held out in front of me in a pose that I'd seen in about a hundred anime openings.

The wind was my only companion as I waited. It curled and swelled through the grass, a single step away from visible while I was wearing these glasses. It felt strange, in a sense that was more ethereal than anything else, it felt like I was being watched. Like there was something in that clearing with me, waiting for me to turn my back.

"I will wait as long as I need to." I kept my eyes on my hand. Actively looking for that presence wasn't what I needed right now; I may have called for it, but I needed it to come to _me._ Otherwise, what was the point? "Even if it takes three years, I'll wait it out. We both know that I _will._ "

Would I, really? I couldn't tell you, but I wasn't the one who needed to make that decision.

My words echoed around the clearing. Up until that point, the acoustics hadn't been nearly good enough for that to happen, but I still didn't look up. For all I knew, this was my one chance. By the standards set for this world, whatever was happening had some grounding in the supernatural. I did too, but the only true link between the two liked to use my own finger to convey anything.

If I looked away, if it came around and I missed it for even a moment, then I could be as good as screwed. Stumbling through as I had been, except even less equipped to deal with whatever happened. Alone in an alien world, awaiting a fate that was more or less sealed anyway.

I couldn't rely on a crew that didn't remember what I was saying.

And then, like catching a glimpse of a face through the static on a T.V, I saw _it._

It could have been a light fog, for all I knew. It coiled about my finger, nonexistent one second and there as though it always had been the next. It closed over my hand, becoming little more than a current of barely-visible immortal, pushing away the Haki covering my finger and infusing itself in its place.

"I can _see_ you."

The fog froze, halfway merged with my body. From the corner of my eye, I noticed the grass on the ground across the clearing from me - where it had been flicking back and forth lazily in the breeze before, now there was no movement to speak of. A leaf hung in the air to my side, defying gravity with casual ease. Straining the edge of my peripherals, I could see clouds that had been floating along the sky stopped dead in their tracks.

I couldn't move. I could hardly think. _I can barely remember._

And then, it _looked at me._

There was no movement. There didn't need to be any movement. I could feel down to my very bones when that presence turned around to face me, the exact moment that I had the full attention of a _deity_ on me.

It was crushing, fulfilling, squeezing, freeing, burning, freezing, explosive, subdued, powerful, weak, eye-opening, heart-pounding-

To put it simply, it laid me the fuck out.

I looked up into the drifting clouds, my arm in exactly the same position as before even though I had been knocked onto my ass. A full second after I realised that I could actually do stuff again, my arm flopped down, slapping me across the face on its journey to lie next to me on the forest floor like a wet noodle. Thanks, asshole.

Hey, the sky looked kind of bright from this angle. Weird.

 ** _Are you awake now?_**

My arm didn't move. No text appeared in the clouds over my head. It didn't even feel like anything unbecoming was happening in my head, but I could still _see_ the words as they hovered in front of my eyes, twisting around themselves in patterns that made no sense and made perfect sense at the same time.

And then, of course, I got annoyed.

"Are you telling me that I finally got to sleep again, and I didn't even get to enjoy it?" I scrubbed at my face with my hands, grumbling obscenities about how I was the most unfortunate person in all the lands. Woe is me, I'm throwing a pity party and everyone's invited. BYO alcohol.

Throughout it all, whatever I'd managed to call forth this time didn't say anything, content to let me dig my emotions into an unmarked grave. I'd probably come by and revive them later, when there was sufficient lightning in the sky, but for now I could have sworn that I'd been trying to do something…

Ah, yes.

"Two questions." I'd long since stopped being concerned about how quickly I could switch moods. It was basically a super power at this point. "First up, who am I talking to?" It would be too nice to believe that I was speaking to that first presence again. I mean, yeah, he stole my soul, but he also let me shit talk him and ignore the fruit without torching my ass. As far as omnipotent bastards were concerned, I was fairly confident I'd gotten a pretty good one.

The second time around? Eh… wrong number.

 ** _I'm heartbroken. How dare you call me pretty good? I'm pretty damn good at least!_**

Well, that solved that.

"I'd tell you to go fuck yourself, but for all I know you're already doing that, so moving on." I crossed my arms and propped up one leg, draping the other over my knee. The wind whistled through the blades of grass beside my ear, sounding distinctly like laughter. "What's going on around here?"

 ** _We're having a lovely chat while I may or may not be fucking myself._**

Not what I meant, asshat.

 ** _Well then be more specific, ASSHAT._**

 _...Fuuuuckkkkkeeeeeeennnnnnnn..._

"It's like speaking to myself if I was powerful and had a purpose in life…" I shook my head at that ridiculous thought and tuned back into the world around me. "Dolphins, memory loss, and dolphins. Care to explain, or should I just start stumbling through the dark for answers now? Just sayin', I would very much prefer the first one."

The response, as they all had been, was instantaneous. It made sense; why would something like that need to take time to think, other than to screw with people's perceptions?

 ** _I can't give you all the answers, obviously._**

"No, that would be too easy, wouldn't it?" I mused aloud to the branch that was now swinging in my view. "So why is that? Violating some contract? Against the laws that govern things like you? Opposing infinite force got your tongue?"

 ** _No. I just don't like you._**

"Entirely fair." Well, it was a good reason. Besides that, my first and only resort for all of this was divine intervention. It was pretty clear that I'd never had any options in the first place. "But you can still tell me _something,_ right?"

The world around me plunged into darkness. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that I'd just closed my eyes. When I tried opening them once more, I was greeted with more darkness, which confused me for a moment before I tried poking at my eyes with a finger. Yep, still closed, and apparently not opening any time soon.

 ** _Do you believe in fate?_**

I figuratively stared at the words for a second, trying to comprehend exactly what was being asked of me. "Fate?" I could hear my own voice echoing in my ears - definitely not carrying in the way I would have expected. I had my doubts I was in the forest any more.

Oh boy, introspection. My favourite. "...I believe it's not a real thing, but I know that it exists."

 ** _Care to elaborate?_**

"Is this going to be on the test?" I rolled my unseeing eyes, feeling an overwhelming urge to stop caring about this conversation. I persevered, though, fighting against myself in a grand battle of interests. Never would you expect I was facing such odds while I crossed my arms set my face in a sour glare.

"Nobody has a predetermined destiny. That's a load of shit." That rabbit hole went further down than I ever could. Deities, multiple universes, criminal responsibility concerning the mere thoughts of such things… it was the kind of thing that people just weren't capable of thinking about. Circles of thought that would turn into spirals, that expanded outwards and shrank in at the same time, for the rest of forever.

"But anyone can look at something that's happened in the past and claim that's how it was always going to happen." Tragedies that happened because people were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone winning it big on the lottery because they managed to guess the correct numbers. An Australian lad taking a tumble in the shower and ending up in an anime world. It was and always would be easier to claim something was going to happen once it had already happened.

"So no, I don't believe in fate." I slipped my hands into my pockets, cracking the bones in my ankle with a lazy rotation of my hanging foot. "I don't need to believe in fate, because fate as it's usually thought of doesn't exist."

 ** _...Incorrect._**

Wait, wha-

 **XxX**

The transition between feeling something against my back and feeling something against the bottom of my foot was nonexistent. I stumbled when I was suddenly vertical instead of horizontal, uncrossing my legs and flapping my arms about uselessly in a bid to regain my balance. Ultimately, I failed, my head bouncing off the ground and my eyes opening of their own accord.

...Only to be met with a never-ending canvas of darkness. Well, what's the damn point of that?

 ** _I would advise against that._** I froze, my hand hovering right in front of my face. I'd been planning on remaking my glasses, seeing as they'd apparently been knocked away in my tumble. **_What you may witness is nothing you are-_**

I poked at my face, because I am an adult, and nobody can tell me what I can and can't do. I made it past the age of 18, I pay my bills, I vote. Fuck you.

I looked up, defiant to the end, a flash of glaring light reflecting off my glasses and illuminating… the persistent nothingness around me. I blinked a few times, glanced around, lifted up my glasses to rub my eyes, and then tried again.

Nothing.

"Well, that's disappointing."

 ** _On the contrary. The less you see, the safer you are from your fate._**

I opened my mouth to inquire just what that meant, only to feel my throat close up on me. I mean that literally; it felt like someone had grabbed my neck with a pneumatic press and turned it onto the highest possible setting. It was distinctly uncomfortable, and more than a little painful.

Ah, pain. How I haven't missed you.

 ** _The place I've brought you to has no name. Unofficially, it's referred to as the Outerworld, the infinite space between universes that are established. Those who can see it are destined to remain. Those who can speak within it have already been doomed for all eternity._**

"!"

I tried to say something, I really did. The moment the thought crossed my mind, the crushing sensation across my throat collapsed even further inwards, spreading across my body like magma. Every attempt to even grunt at the onslaught of agony only brought more, setting me on the path of an infinite loop that I was ill-equipped to deal with.

At that point, in the distance, I saw it. A small fleck of light, nothing more than a pinprick far over what should have been the horizon, but what came with it was a sense of dread far stronger than any I had ever felt before.

 _Those who can see it are destined to remain..._

There were no words incoming as I brought my hand to my lips. No comfort or advice offered by my supernatural companion when I bit down on my knuckles in an attempt to stave off the noises trying to come from my mouth. My teeth scraped against and _through_ bone while I writhed, feeling every nerve erupt as I bit down, but that was infinitely preferable to what I'd been experiencing before then.

 ** _Impressive._** With my body still quivering uncontrollably, I didn't feel all that impressive. **_Not many can bring themselves back from the Outerworld's influence. Certainly none who have due reason to be here._**

 _I want to leave._ I did my best to project that thought in any capacity, my teeth still digging through the skin of my knuckles. _Take me back, please._

 ** _Soon, kid. Bear it a little longer, this is important._**

I slammed my eyes shut, squeezing my eyelids as close together as they could go. The words would still appear, I would still be able to read them, but I didn't want to see anything else right now. The light in the distance was growing brighter, and the last image I got before blocking it out looked like a street sign, funnily enough.

 ** _Your home is actually pretty close to the mark when it comes to the Multiverse. Infinite universes, infinite possibilities. One reaction is different, one compound in making one universe spawns forth a whole new series of creations. Choices are made, more are born, and thus it will grow forever. How does it all happen? Sorry to say, but I don't have an answer to that. Only the Big Man himself does, and last I heard, he's not quite impressed enough with you to share the wealth of knowledge._**

I shook my head at that. There was more, there had to be more than that.

 ** _Indeed there is, but we don't have time for that. The main point is that when a universe is born, it knows what it wants to happen. Everything, down to the smallest chemical reaction in someone's brain, is scripted. Us immortals, the ones who actually get far enough to have a say in matters? Well, I could tell you we govern it, but in reality we just live with it. The chain of command goes way further than me. It transcends Life and Death so thoroughly that they may as well not exist. It's goes so far that I can't even comprehend it, so no offence, but you wouldn't have a chance._**

No sense. That made no sense. The pain was finally dulling, no longer putting me at risk of making a sound, and it was with a solemn shake of my head that I removed my fingers from my mouth and shook them out.

It stung, yes, but not enough to make me forget what had just transpired.

 ** _Reality itself is all nonsense. You're just convinced it isn't because that's where you exist._**

I had nothing to say or think to that one. I just… wasn't well informed enough to argue with something like that. I felt the urge, sure, but what was the point when all I could do was cross my arms and stick out my tongue in defiance?

 ** _Either way, kid, universes know what they want, and it's out of anyone's jurisdiction to change that. They've all got their own fates taken care of, but what would happen if something was displaced? Such as, say, one person who existed in one reality was moved to another universe, with no means of pushing them back?_**

 _Rebellion,_ was the first thought in my mind, but that was short-lived. What had just been explained to me was a closed system. There was no accountability for something like that, no need to seek approval or redemption for whatever action it decided to undertake. Assuming there was some level of sentience, an understanding on some level of what it wanted and the capabilities to go about getting it…

It would get rid of it. It would do whatever it could to push that problem out of existence.

 ** _Precisely. It's not that simple, though._**

I rolled my closed eyes. Fucking when is it ever?

 ** _See, while the politics of all of this is lost on both of us, I can tell you that nobody ever REALLY plays by the rules. Keep in mind, kid, you've got Death itself watching your back. You've got a personal squadron over here, doing their all to keep your presence present and, most importantly, hidden. But this is enemy territory at best. The more you do, the more people you interact with and the stronger you become, the more difficult it is to keep the fact that you're there under wraps._**

Great.

 ** _BUT._**

 _Great._

 ** _You're already claimed. We hold your soul, which grants us absolute power. We can keep you there, but we can't do anything else in regards to everyone else. That's Life's domain, far out of our reach, and that's why this deal that we made over you didn't take a millennium to get through. See, it's a bit of a habit of mine, but I've not been entirely honest with you up until this point._**

The random higher power that had infinite knowledge in comparison to my dumb ass hadn't been honest with me? Shocking.

 ** _The strongest warrior isn't any one person, kid. The strongest warrior is the strongest opposing force._**

Wait, you can't possibly mean…

 ** _'Fraid so. Everything I've said is a script, because nobody wanted to let you know that you're fighting a losing battle. Even if the universe can't wipe you out of it physically, the concept of you and all you do to upset future plans can be rectified. And you would never know it was happening, unless someone deigned to tell you._**

I couldn't think. I couldn't see anything around me. I tried to inhale, but even that had been taken from me. All I could smell was decay. All I could taste was nothingness. For the first time, in that moment, it truly sank in that I was no longer human.

 ** _Paperwork was a load of shit. Nothing of the sort exists, at least not where me and mine are concerned. You need to understand that you're not the only one of your kind out in the multiverse. There are countless others, but they're all alive. You're the first weapon that we've managed to get together without Life cracking down on us and impeding all progress. We tried giving you an antagonist in the beginning, but that didn't work, so I'm going to have to ask you..._**

 ** _"Open your eyes, kid."_**

The voice was melodious, low and rich. It sounded familiar, wrapping around me in an embrace that I'd never felt before. Almost against my will, I obeyed the instruction, slowly cracking my eyes open.

I was met with disaster.

It was a street in a major Earth city, I could tell that much. Perhaps Tokyo, if I had to guess from the smattering of characters I could see scrawled across a few signs. I was standing in the middle of a crossroads, facing down a street that had tall buildings crumbling down on either side. Any plant life I could see was dead or dying, and the burnt-out husks of cars littered the surprisingly wide-open space.

Everything I could see looked abandoned. Left to the elements of what could have been centuries, paint stripped from everything that should have held it and rust covering every instance of metal in sight.

I won't lie, I was scared to look to the side, but I knew I would have to at some point. To my left was more devastation, styled around a street that could have come straight from ancient Greece, if my passable knowledge of architecture at best could be trusted. To the right was a confusing structure made of neon and bending metals that I wouldn't have been able to identify if I was given time to study. It looked stereotypically futuristic, and the only sign that it wasn't functional was the sparks raining down from almost everything within sight.

 ** _"What a dump, eh?"_**

I hesitated, silently contemplating my options as that same voice sounded from right behind me. It should have been familiar, everything about it was something that I'd heard before. I couldn't run, I couldn't hide, and I certainly didn't have the slightest clue how to get out of here.

So, I turned around. I turned around, hand raising to greet whoever my mysterious companion was. Upon sighting the dark cloak and hood drawn over their face, I paused, glancing left and right to make sure there were no scythes in view.

 ** _"I suppose this is pretty fun, as overused as that excuse is."_** I could see the bottom of a goatee through the shadows spread by the hood. Though really, considering what I was dealing with, it was more likely that I'd been allowed to catch a glimpse of it. The lower half of this thing's face split into a grin, two glints of light flashing around the eye area as it tilted its head. **_"Well met, Lucas."_**

I was about to nod to him, when the house he was standing in front of caught my eye. It was a boringly painted thing, white with an obnoxiously long driveway, but it was almost enough to draw forth a gasp.

Even so, I could do nothing but gape as I took in the disarray of this place's version of my house, with the front door caved in around the middle and half the windows missing outright.

 ** _"Looks like destiny hasn't been too kind to you after all, huh mate?"_** With that, I figured out where I'd heard that voice from. My head felt like it was on a spring, going up from the figure in front of me to the house, and then back again. I pointed at him, mouth gaping open in silent question, my jaw somehow finding a way to descend even lower when his grin widened further and I caught a glimpse of the gap between his front teeth.

I took a step towards him, looking up into what I could see of his face. He was taller than me, having perhaps half a foot over me. His hair was pitch black in the shitty lighting that seemed to spread throughout this place, his eyes just as dark around the hints of green.

 ** _"We're tired, all of my kind. We're tired of having to operate around these obstacles that call themselves universes. We can't do anything; no matter what we try, we can't do anything about it."_**

I stopped, a step away from him. His eyes were wicked this close up, carrying an intensity that I'd not seen before.

 ** _"We're tired of Life prevailing over anything we ever do."_** One of my hands started reaching for the hood. **_"We're a ruling force, and yet we're treated like dogs, insects, nothing. It was only fair, that we'd construct our own weapon and fight back. Take one soul with promise, one with potential, one that was angry."_**

There was some odd resistance around this man's head, like I was trying to push through a tub of semi-solidified concrete.

 ** _"You're one of the last things we can think of to stave off this tyranny. None of the living subjects have ever figured it out, and they've never even gotten close."_**

My fingers were almost brushing against the hood. Steadily, I increased the strength in my arm, pushing closer and closer to my goal.

 ** _"We'll never take their treatment lying down. I won't allow it. They're pushing the balance too far, if they're not stopped soon then they may just break the balance completely."_**

I was so damn close-!

 ** _"I told you when we first spoke that I didn't have a name, didn't I? Sorry, but that was another lie. Though to be fair, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have taken it all that well back on that beach."_**

My fingers finally clasped onto the hood.

 ** _"I was the best one for the job of looking over you. Seeing as I was born here, and this is your fate whether either of us like it or not."_**

With a mighty heave, I swept it back, throwing it off and somehow not pulling any of his hair out in the process.

My own face, weathered and wrinkled, stared back at me with a grin that promised nothing but chaos.

 ** _"You should just refract the Haki through the lenses and back into your body."_** A pair of glasses materialised around his eyes. They were small and smart, with a pair of sharks arched up either side for good measure. **_"Quick, easy, multiplies everything that goes through it automatically. That's what the last guy did."_**

Why hadn't that occurred to me before now? Idiocy, probably, but it would be easy enough to remember… wait.

 _The memories!_ I seemed to blink, and in that moment the other me was far out of my reach. I was left with my hand outstretched, desperately groping at thin air as a black cloud ate away at the edge of my vision. _What happened to you? WHO ARE YOU!?_

Like a faulty translation, the man's mouth moved without a sound, his voice taking a moment to catch up to it. It came through to my ears fuzzy, as though leaving a speaker that was just this side of broken.

 ** _"I gave up the rights to my real name long ago. It's yours now. Just call me Intern. As for the memories, well..."_**

Flash of light- pain- can't feel anything- help-

 ** _Why not make yourself unforgettable?_**

Nothingness.

 **XxX**

Waking up after all of that was less of an experience and more of a chore.

"Gaaahhhhh…" I hissed through my teeth, pushing myself up off the grass and planting and rubbing at my forehead with both palms. My brain felt like all of its squishy parts had just been used to tow a truck, and my eyes were aching like a warthog Zoan had just seen fit to stomp on them with a peg-leg.

...Where the fuck did that analogy come from?

Oh, whatever. It wasn't like it was the most confusing thing to happen in the last few minutes. I stopped scrubbing at my aching eyes at that thought, phantom fire lacing across my limbs as I did my utmost to recall just what had happened, what I'd been told.

"Universes… lies… _me…_ damn it all." I laughed, a humourless puff of air that felt more like a cough than anything else. It knocked me back, my head thudding back into the grass below and my arms flopping gracelessly after it. It was only fitting that I be on the ground for this when the carpet had been pulled out from under my feet so thoroughly. The sun was bright overhead, which was odd, seeing as it'd only been about dusk the last time I'd checked. Time dilation between separate pockets of reality, mayhaps?

...Oh, I didn't have it in me to care right now.

"Son of a bitch never even told me about the dolphins…"

Haaaaa… a weapon, huh? Striking out against reality by undermining one of its basic fundamentals? Sounds like something I would do… how childish.

Idly, I waved my hand, leaving a shimmering arc of air that extended from the ground beside my head to my chest. I'd created this lens with refraction in mind, and with one eye monitoring my progress, I willed forth a tiny amount of Haki to the tip of my index finger and pressed it to the end of the lens that was resting on the grass. It was immediately swept up, racing through the modified atmosphere and turning colourless in its path. In about as much time as it would take to blink, the lens was clear once more, that tiny amount of Haki now turned into an amount that easily covered my chest, neck, and halfway down my limbs.

Easy. Cheap. Simple. So simple. So damn simple, unlike everything else I was facing in this situation.

I swept my arm in that same pattern, this time starting from my chest and extending outwards. I kept that same thought in my mind - refraction of all Haki that would pass through, not bothering to think of a name as I gathered up all the Haki that had been created and forcefully compressed it to the tip of my finger once more.

I touched it to the lens - rinse, repeat. My entire body hardened, with everything that couldn't fit on the surface descending deeper.

Simple. Simple. Simple simple simple…

"FUCK!"

The lens shattered into countless shimmering fractals under the force of my fist. They all melted away before they could even touch the ground, the pieces that had stuck to my fist disappearing last.

I covered my eyes with that hand, gritting my teeth as the images flashed through my mind. The desecrated streets, my ruined home, my own face looking down on me as I declared myself as my only hope… I think?

A twist of orange Haki caught my attention as it swirled across my knuckles, visible even without my glasses. I watched as it battled against the flow of black pushing it forward, fighting a hopeless battle against the tide in an attempt to reach where the lens had been.

"It's gone, little buddy." I murmured, watching it struggle. The lens was shattered, and even if it wasn't, it just didn't have what it looked like it was going to take to even reach it in the first place. It was stuck, hoping against hope that it would pull through. It probably felt much like I did in that very moment.

It was sometime around then that I realised I was emphathising with a piece of pilfered soul. That was the second most embarrassing moment of my life, only beaten out by the realisation that I couldn't even glorify myself that far. It wasn't empathy, it was _envy._

I was _envious_ of a tiny soul fleck's drive in the face of overwhelming odds.

What a fucking joke.

"Why do you even bother?" I poked at the orange Haki, watching it put in the effort to dodge around my finger even while it fought. I did nothing beyond that, my own opinion of myself plummeting at the sickening sensation of guilt curling around my stomach. "You'll never get anywhere without help…"

 _I have my doubts that you feel guilt._

My finger stilled as that voice filled my ears. It could have been carried by the wind. It could have been my own imagination. That no-nonsense tone brought a smile to my face without me even realising it, that low volume lifting me higher than any words of wisdom or encouragement ever could.

I wanted to laugh. Or maybe cry. Throwing myself into the ocean was a possibility, too. But even so...

"...I guess you're right."

I just kept falling for the same traps, didn't I? No matter what I told myself, apparently I would be just like any other driving force behind a multiversal vagrant; unreliable. Helpless when it really mattered.

No. Enough.

Another lens lit up my palm. This one was smaller, barely even there, but it extended along my arm with but a thought. It curled up and down, covering from the tips of my fingers to the edge of my elbow, and it was all for one particularly stubborn colour.

"I guess you need to work your way up to guilty, don't you?"

I hauled myself to my feet, not really taking any notice as my arm slowly lit up with the ethereal glow of an artificial sunset. It seemed like the trees and bushes parted for me as I went, and I will continue to swear until the day I die that I felt a pair of hands resting comfortingly on my shoulders. Pushing me forward, towards whatever.

Multiversal conspiracies, battles between life and death, weird pocket dimensions, dolphins… I could worry about those later.

Right now, I had a second chance to give back to the most helpful person on this island, and damn it all if I was gonna screw it up again.

 **XxX**

So it turns out that if people already look to you like a God and you walk through town literally glowing, you're going to turn a few heads.

I still had the lens wrapping around my arm, and consistently sending Arlong's Haki through it back and forth had done wonders in multiplying the amount that I had to work with. I was still operating on nothing but blind faith and whatever luck was being thrown my way, of course, so I really had no idea what I was doing beyond strutting down the street towards where the Going Merry had been docked.

The festivities hadn't been cleared in the least. The streets were still filled with rubbish, leftover utensils or food that had been dropped within sight regardless of where you were looking. There were chairs all over the place, a few tables in varying states of disarray, and even what looked like a half finished statue of the Straw Hat crew lying halfway into a bush.

I'm not even going to question that one.

I kept my head gaze low as people tried to come up to me, wishing me luck for my journey or begging me not to leave. I ignored them all, because in all honesty, I didn't really give a damn about any of them.

I was looking for one woman. She wasn't in the crowd, as far as I could see; no blue hair. Someone tried to grab at my arm, their fingers skimming along the edge of my sleeve. I didn't see who it was, they were swallowed up by the crowd a moment before I could turn to see anything other than their outstretched arm.

Alright, yeah, fuck it.

I cupped my hands around my mouth, making sure to inhale enough to actually make myself heard. I was in the middle of a hub of noise, surrounded on all sides by people who were once brainwashed and were now stupid, I guess. There's no such thing as a Shark God when it doesn't specifically benefit me, come on people.

"OI, NOJIKO!"

The crowd fell silent at my shout, those closest to me even going so far as to take a few steps back. As they well should, I was terrifying when I wanted to be. _Rawr._ See?

"WHA!?" The return shout came from in front of me, coincidentally in the same direction that I could see the Going Merry's sail. So she was waiting at the ship, was she? Thank me for small miracles.

No, seriously, thank me. I accept praise in the form of monetary compensation.

The people around me were clever enough to get out of the way as I started making my way towards the ship. The lens running along my arm grew even brighter on the way, as I fed Arlong's Haki through it a few more times in preparation.

The last of the crowd stepped out of the way, making me feel more important in my mouse-eared jacket than I probably had any right to feel. I stepped through the gap with nary a word, almost colliding head-first with Nojiko when she apparently had the same idea.

Not too thrilled with the prospect of spending more of today on my ass, I slipped around her before we bumped into one another, placing a hand on her shoulder to steady her as she stumbled.

She looked… tired was one word. Her eyes were drooping a bit further closed than they usually did, her shoulders slumped enough for it to be noticeable. The main sails of the Going Merry caught in the wind as Luffy called my name, a snicker echoing out from the ship when I held up three fingers. Three minutes, probably enough time. Maybe.

Nojiko yawned, using a palm to rub at her eyes. I shook her shoulder a little bit, just to remind her that I was actually there, and she started awake with a soft snort.

Then she caught sight of my glowing arm. The blank stare I got in response to that carried with it more weight than words ever could.

"Hold out your hand for a second." I'm not sure if the way she didn't even question me further on that was a good thing or a bad thing. She just held out her hand, looking up at me for further instruction. "Are you alright?"

"Couldn't sleep." She yawned again, rocking back on her heels with the force of it. I grabbed her hand with my glowing arm, siphoning the Haki back into my body and willing the lens away as I did so. "Looked for you all night. Couldn't find ya."

Ah. Right. I did say I'd be accompanying her last night, didn't I?

"I'm sorry about that." I grimaced, trying to think of something to say to that. 'I went to the place between universes and an older version of myself told me that I'm apparently fighting a war so far outside our comprehension that we would never know it existed'? Yeah, that probably wouldn't have the desired effect. Unforgettable? Oh, absolutely.

"I, uh… I had a strange day."

"Yeah, I bet'y did…" I got a tired glare and pouty frown in response to that. I don't think she'd been aiming for a pout, but that's what she got anyway. "You're a selfish bastard, you know that?"

"I'm human." Or close enough. I poked at her lip with my free hand, and most certainly did _not_ laugh in her face when she tried to swat my finger away and ended up slapping herself across the cheek. "Humans deserve to be a little selfish every now and then. It's part of living, y'know?"

Nojiko narrowed her eyes. This time, she wasn't even looking at me; her lips had thinned into a line as she stared off to the side.

"We deserve to be selfish, huh?"

"Sure," she jumped a little bit, apparently unaware that I'd been able to hear her. I shook my head at her, my smile a bit more taut than it had been before. "After everything that happened here over the last decade, I'd go so far as to say you're entitled to a little selfishness."

She blinked up at me, face and eyes going blank once more. No matter how hard I tried, I just wasn't able to read what was going on behind them.

She glanced off to the side and nodded, as though reaffirming something to herself, and then wriggled our connected hands, the back of hers lying in my palm. "When can I have this back?"

Ah, right. "In a minute, hang on…" A bright flash of light later, and a flat lens was sitting in my palm, phasing upwards and through Nojiko's hand. I found no amount of vindictive glee in the way her eyes bugged almost out of her head, none at all, and the way she looked up at me like she'd just had her entire world flipped upside down on her didn't make me want to cackle in the least, shut up.

"Lens Lens…" I mouthed the last word to her, failing to keep in my grin when her eyes widened even further with understanding. She tried to scowl at me, she really did, but her quivering lips and the tilt in the corner of her eyelids completely ruined any effect it may have had.

"Hubris." We intoned together, me a fraction of a second before her.

It was an interesting structure that I was going with here. I could feel a good chunk of Nojiko's spirit flocking around the hand I was holding, no doubt having sensed the disturbance I was causing. The pieces of lens on either side of her hand was where I was sending the Haki first, two thirds of the same whole that had a radically different job than the centre piece. They would mix the Haki in with Nojiko's body, and then move through to the final piece.

It would be up to her to give the final push, and actually shape what she wanted done.

It might have been risky, I really didn't know. I was ready to pull the plug at any moment, my muscles bunched up and ready to pull away should the need arise. My reasons for doing it were two-fold; see if it was possible, and to make sure this gift was hers and hers alone.

I closed my eyes and brushed the bridge of my nose with a stained thumb, bringing forth a pair of sunglasses into existence. Holding my breath, sending up a silent prayer, straining my ears for any noise... I glanced down.

The head of a puppy was looking back up at me.

Nojiko's eyes were narrowed at the palm of her hand, her eyebrows drawn together in her concentration. The body was beginning to take form, faster than I thought it would. In the time it took for Nojiko to take a few more breaths, a solid blue form of a tiny puppy was lying in her hands, growing larger by the second.

And larger. And larger. I took the dog from Nojiko's slackened hands once it became apparent that she wasn't going to do so herself, cutting off the connection it had with the lenses. Even so, with my hands on its body it kept getting bigger, siphoning out about half the Haki I'd had in my body before it even occurred to me to shatter the lenses.

The fluffy puppy, now about the size of the Labrador I'd left behind at home, yipped up at me happily. It was blue all around, with facial features that were _just_ discernible through the constantly jittering haze that was its body. The only part of it that didn't share the colour of Nojiko's soul was the tip of its tail, which was a black so dark that it could almost count as a total absence of colour.

Though speaking of Nojiko…

"You alright?" I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose fully, heedless of the dog circling our heels as I looked her over. She seemed fine, not drained as I'd been fearing. If anything, her soul looked even more plentiful and powerful, shining brighter and shooting further through her body than before.

She managed a nod, gesturing towards the faux-dog that was now leaping at her leg and nipping playfully at her fingers. I chuckled at her expression, putting about as much effort into my nod as she had in regards to her silent question, before turning around to make sure Luffy hadn't been talked into setting off without me or something.

Someone grasped my chin from the side, turning my face back around. Oi, oi, that probably would have been a dangerous manoeuvre if you used it on anyone other than m-

"Mmph!?"

Okay, no, too close. It'd been pretend, damn it, pretend! I was _hiding behind you_ so this wouldn't happen- no, don't open your mouth. Don't open _my_ mouth, what are you-!?

"Zzzzzz…"

DID YOU REALLY JUST FALL ASLEEP RIGHT NOW!?

Alright, she was snoring right into my mouth. This could be salvaged, I could get out of this just fine. I mean, maybe it's not as bad as it could be. At least nobody was watchi-

"Alright Luffy, I've got everything I ne- Cask, **_WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SISTER!?"_**

I repurposed one of the hands trying to get me out of Nojiko's death grip so I could facepalm with the force of one hundred percent. Not even _that_ could dislodge me from her arms.

"Zzzzzzz…"

"Bark!"

"...mmph."

 **XxX**

Stumbling onto the deck of the Going Merry, I felt another hand on my shoulder. Recent events still fresh in my mind, I turned around slowly, watching with narrowed eyes and a heart full of suspicion.

Sanji stared back at me, his face uncharacteristically serious. It was kind of jarring, seeing that expression when his hair was messed up to the point of almost exposing both of his eyes and his face was decorated with five different shades of lipstick.

"Cask." His grip tightened. I rolled my eyes and prepared for whatever this would end up being. "Forever and always… you are my _GOD._ "

I blinked down at him, with his dishevelled appearance and half-smoked cigarette. Movement near the shore caught my eye, and I spotted five somewhat familiar faces, all of which were in an equal amount of disarray, all the while keeping their terrifyingly blank expressions.

Sanji squeezed my shoulder one last time, before stumbling his way towards the kitchen. His legs almost seemed a little weak… but that was impossible.

He was probably just tired.


	20. Chapter 20

**A/N:** Originally, this was going to be way, _way_ longer. However, due to reasons I'll go into at the end of this update, It got both delayed and shortened.

Hope you enjoy.

* * *

Hey, you. Yeah, you, I'm talking to you. No, not you, sit the fuck down, I'm talking to the other guy. Wait, are you a guy? Wait, where'd you go- what the fuck?

…Yeah, alright, that's a bit weird. Guess I'm talking to everyone then. Alright, gather up close, come on up to the front where you can hear me. I want to share with you all a little secret, okay? Now, what I'm telling you here isn't something you should go around blurting to anybody who would listen. The world might not be ready for the wisdom I'm about to drop on all your heads. Everybody alright with this? Everybody who can't take it already left? Alright, good. Now, come on, come a bit closer, and listen very carefully when I tell you…

Haki is a little weird.

…Wait, what do you mean you already knew that? How do you know my name!? WHO ARE YOU-!?

Slowly, I looked up from my pet project, casting a suspicious glance from left to right. That voice, it sounded very familiar, like I was telling my dirty secrets to thin air and yelling at a possum again. I mean, it only happened those two times, but still…

Aaaanyway, where was I again? Oh, right, this pet project. Just me, alone at the top of the rigging, with nothing but my Haki and lenses to keep me company while I definitely didn't start talking to myself because the strain of being a pirate in an unfamiliar world was starting to tear away at my mental faculties…

A little yip caught my attention. With a start, I looked back down at the array of lenses I'd built, one on top of the other, where they formed a rough sphere that was about two metres across. Maybe a little less, but it was about as wide as I could comfortably stretch my arm, while still giving myself some leeway for whatever I may need it for.

The orange puppy that I'd been experimenting on mercilessly gave me a blank look. I could feel it, a construct not fifteen minutes of this world, judging me for my lack of focus and lack of conviction and probably my lack of intelligence too. That, if anything, was enough to prove the close connection the two of us had. I rolled my eyes at him, because in my mind he was already a him, and got back to work pumping normal, colourless Haki into the lens relays I'd built into both of my palms. All things considered, it should have been counter-productive or at least offered me absolutely zero in net gains, but apparently, Haki didn't run on numbers and lenses didn't run on quantity.

So, hey, turns out that Haki is a little weird. Also, turns out that I had absolutely no clue how this Lens-Lens Fruit was supposed to work. But I was having fun trying to figure it all out, so that had to count for something, right?

Yeah, I didn't think so. I'd never felt as though my brain had been geared towards science before, and now that I had something in my hands that seemingly defied all of it, I could also say that I'd ever felt like I was all that well geared towards magical hocus-pocus soul power bullshit either. What'd that leave me? Soul-crushing mediocrity?

"Yip!"

Oh, shut the fuck up. I'm getting to you.

Alright, so, the first thing I'd done after Sanji had wobbled his way into the kitchen was do my part to get the ship moving. It got easier with each time that I tended to the rigging, and now that I had proper motivation to remain as far off Nami's radar as I possibly could, let's just say I had some good incentive to not mess anything up. Not to say that Nami didn't try to get my attention, but once upon a time, I'd had two pains in the ass for sisters. I knew how to ignore a lady that I'd had a direct hand in angering, despite not having done anything wrong. It was practically necessary for continued survival.

…Current circumstances notwithstanding.

After the rigging was secure and we were cleared to leave land, I turned all attention to what I could recall about everything I'd been told. I didn't waste time on the philosophical debate, at least not intentionally, instead repeating those few words of advice to myself over and over until they were burned into my head.

 ** _You should just refract the Haki through the lens and back into your body. Quick, easy, multiplies everything that goes through it automatically. That's what the last guy did._**

I'd taken that and ran with it. I'd run with it until I was so far over the hill that I was never coming back; Mother Duck could go fuck herself.

The first thing I'd done was attempt to create a lens somewhere without touching it. Nothing had appeared in thin air when I thought about it really hard, but I did get perfect results after latching some Haki onto a rope that was a few metres out of reach. After that, I'd go about seeing if there was a hard limit to the number of lenses I could tote around at one time.

I lost count at two hundred and seventeen after a bird smacked into my face. And that was before I'd even finished the structure that was going to be in my left hand. Add into the fact that I replicated it as best I could in reverse for the other hand, lay hundreds upon hundreds more atop one another to get the circle shape going, and added however many tiny lenses to the inside of the thing, too small to even see but definitely large enough to splash whatever I was reflecting in direction conceivable…

Look, go big or go the fuck home, alright? If I had any say in this, which I damn well did, then this thing was going to light up the whole friggin' world.

I was probably going to be eternally grateful for the fact that I could make new lenses on lenses that I'd already brought into existence, though. What I'd gotten together here had already taken me close to an hour, and that was just for a misshapen ball. If I had to choreograph this shit on top of that? Yeah, nah. I think I'd rather just throw myself into the ocean.

Still, it may have taken me a while, but in the end, I got what I wanted.

Haki went into my left hand, glowing orange with the effects of Arlong's soul, and my lovely creation lit up like an exploding star. I knew the light was painful when I heard Zoro start screaming at me, and we may or may not have run over a few dolphins while Nami was indisposed with rubbing her eyes. I couldn't see for certain, it was too bright.

Still, the first experiment was a success. Perhaps, it was a bit _too_ successful, and I had to shut it down before I burned someone's retinas to a crisp. For about half a minute, the East Blue became the East Orange. If it didn't take about half my fucking life to set up, I probably would have followed that rabbit hole until I managed to weaponise it. Ah well, add it to the list that I would have to remember to write at some point.

I also ended up with a fuckload of Arlong's Haki. As in, more than the fishman himself had when we came across him. Technically, if I had the appropriate education and desire to be some sort of horrific doctor, I could make myself approximately 1.3 fully operational, soul-included Arlongs. I had the DNA, after all, even if I wasn't exactly sure where the nose or the set of jaws were at the moment.

Even so, even with all this newfound and quite frankly unfair soul juice, I still had a problem.

See, while I _could_ hold this massive orb for a while and generate all the Haki I would ever possibly need, I didn't _want_ to. That would mean I would have to _work_ , and working was _boring._

Thus, I had come to this idea. Making myself my own puppy, I could pump every little bit of Haki that I wanted into it, probably only keeping a sliver in case things went catastrophically wrong and I had to start over. Then, after it had reached a point where everything seemed like it would work together, I would shive a lens in there so it could replicate itself over and over within the same space, and then tether it to my own body so that, if the lens did give out or the body did lose shape, it would flow back to me instead of possibly dissipating into the wind.

Long story short, I was going to make a cute critter purely so I could enslave it and possibly make it fight on my behalf.

Hey, I'd written Pokémon fanfics in the past. This was two, _three_ steps maximum up the ladder towards sociopathy. If I wasn't there already and, well, the jury was still out on that one.

"You're going to be vicious," I whispered to the adorable little blob of soul chunks that I currently had trapped. The dog tilted its head up at me, and seriously, it would have been a perfect fit if I'd gone for a purse instead of a lopsided ball.

"Vicious…" I vowed to myself, before getting back to work.

"Lens Lens: Hubris." I could really appreciate shounen when it did all the heavy lifting for me. Activating my Fruit, a few new lenses appeared across the ball where I wanted them to be; hardly any effort on my behalf beyond saying the name. The little dog, which I would have to name at some point unless I wanted to keep referring to him as 'Dog', looked around at the new additions before catching my eye once more and nodding.

I nodded back, settling my face into a serious expression, lest I distract myself. I didn't have a name for this next part, which meant that I needed to actually focus on bringing the next two lenses to life; just a little somethin' somethin' that would help him take a hit if necessary. And knowing this world and the shit I was dealing with, it would probably be more than necessary. "Let's do this, little buddy."

"Yip!"

Taking that as the go-ahead, I squared my shoulders and _pushed._

Now, I'm not sure if you know this or not, but Haki is _really weird._ From what I could tell, it didn't really have a numerical value, but I was able to multiply it as though it did. Nor did it seem to be a matter of quality. It was almost like a strange fusion of the two that went beyond any realm of thought that I could grant myself access to. I only knew that I could make _more_ , not what that _more_ actually pertained to. Maybe it was just an issue of me trying to look at it from a purely mathematical viewpoint instead of something more geared towards science. Maybe I would never know- scratch that. Most likely, I would never know.

Having positioned myself so my own body was acting as a shield against the light for everyone else, I didn't get to see their reactions down below once I began. The orb immediately shone orange, as I'd been expecting, before flecks of my own black joined into it.

That, too, was as I'd expected.

The dog's form wavered slightly, but it held up to the new influx that was being forced into it. Parts bulged before they smoothed themselves out; a leg growing to twice the length it should have been before shortening again and the forehead swelling to a point where I was sure it would explode, just to name a few.

"What are you doing up there, Training Dummy?" Oops, looks like Zoro was awake again.

"Magic!" I shouted over my shoulder, because 'shut up, I'm trying to concentrate' would take too long. Turning my full attention back to the dog, I could see that almost all of the orange Haki had been siphoned away, Armament quickly rushing in to fill the gaps.

"Alright little buddy, this is probably going to be the hard pa-"

All of the Armament Haki that I'd been pushing through the lenses disappeared. The dog's body shone black for a moment, which was difficult enough to imagine on its own, before the light died down and I was left staring at a pitch-black dog as it fell… from my shattered lenses… into the ocean…!

 _"PUPPY!"_ Executing a perfect flop that almost got me tangled in the rigging that I was trying to jump off of, I dove after the dog. It was only after I was passing the Going Merry's railing with maybe a centimetre or two to spare did I realise _just_ what it was that I had done.

"…Motherfu-"

 _Sploosh._

 **XxX**

Going underwater was a very strange experience when you just kept going _down._

This wasn't the first time I'd found myself in the ocean, but it was the first time I could recall since eating my Devil Fruit. All that stuff everyone always goes on about how a Fruit user will get fucked up in water? Absolutely, completely, 100% and then some accurate.

As soon as I hit the water, I felt exhausted. The closest comparison to the experience I had would probably have been from back when I was still alive, regularly staying up for days on end and going so far beyond tired that I wasn't even able to get to sleep if I tried. It was a fairly extreme case of insomnia, but I'd lived with it for so long that it'd become just another state of existence. Tired, Asleep, Beyond Tired.

This went beyond Beyond Tired. It was something more akin to a complete lack of energy. Was there a word for that? Entropy?

Something black streaked across my vision, snapping me out of the strangely calm train of thought that was taking up the tracks. True, there wasn't really any real reason why I should have been very bothered by these circumstances, I was hardly going to drown. Then again, when you couldn't find it within yourself to even blink, then you probably couldn't find it within yourself to panic.

It was hard to tell when my current environment was just varying smudges of black against a vaguely- blue but still also black background, but I could just make out the snout and floppy ears in the diminishing light. For someone who'd shaped his entire world around blatant racism and delusions of grandeur, Arlong's soul sure wasn't a very intimidating presence. The fucking thing looked like a bunny that had been genetically engineered to be even _less_ threatening. Maybe that was just due to the fact that he'd never really developed it any?

Meh, I'd fix that eventually.

'I hate you.' I tried to talk to the dog, but when actually moving my jaw was brought into the question, that plan kind of just fell apart. I settled on thinking it really hard and hoping whatever arbitrary connection the two of us had would transmit it over. After all, hate was such a powerful emotion.

"Yip!"

Of course, it got the choice to speak freely. You know what, screw water. I never drank it back home and I managed to survive for as long as I did, and you couldn't even drink the ocean. The fuck has it ever done for anyone, aside from hide away creatures from prehistoric times and make me hold out hope that Godzilla would eventually end up being real?

What can I say? Widespread destruction just spoke to me sometimes. It kept the voices that droned a dictionary back to me in monotone and the voice telling me to burn everything company. They were great friends, those two.

With a Herculean amount of effort that seemed kind of pathetic in the moment, let alone in hindsight, I managed to tilt my head up. The first thing I saw in the rapidly darkening water was the head of blond hair slowly gaining on me. The second thing was… what I didn't see, funnily enough. How fucking far down had I managed to get if I couldn't see the sky anymore?

"Yip!"

It was purely by coincidence that my head drifted back down enough to actually make out the dog. It'd managed to curl itself up in my arms, likely because it had realised what was happening to us and really needed a friend in such troubling times. 'Nice knowing you too, buddy.' Hopefully, it wouldn't be able to pick up on the sarcasm.

My back bumped into something solid. I waited for whatever it may be, a whale or piece of sunken ship or something along those lines to move along and let me keep going down, but aside from a bit of the weightless floundering that was par for the course when submerged in water that wasn't stagnant, I didn't move one bit.

Really, this was the end? I'd already reached the floor? Fucking damn it, I'd already resigned myself to an eternity under the sea, I figured I would at least get to witness some caverns. Deep sea geysers. Old water Gods spoken of only in the legends of the most displaced societies; something _interesting._ What a disappointing ocean.

Sanji's hair, which had been little more than a pinprick of light a second ago, was now far closer than it should have been. The water around me got a bit lighter, and it was only confirmed that I was floating back up when Sanji got a good look at me, only to immediately let out a long line of bubbles and start thrashing. During one convulsion, I got a quick look at the person behind him; Zoro was floating completely still some ways away, his eyes bulging almost as wide as his cheeks, a haze of red surrounding him. It seemed to be coming from his chest.

My entire face twitched. It was as close as I could get to batting my eyelashes and swooning over my _saviours._ Really, if I'd had the option, I would have coated everything in Armament except for my head, and then facepalmed with enough force to create a fucking tsunami.

Argh, for fucking fuck sakes, plans for natural disasters later. Plans to get everyone out of this alive _now._ At best, we had Usopp and Nami to help this, and if Luffy got it in his head to try to help, then that'd leave us a swimmer short to actually manage this. That was assuming that Sanji wasn't far enough down to drown before either of them reached him, and the copious amounts of blood Zoro was losing didn't attract anything that would eat him. Yes, he could take care of himself, but he was still fairly human. At least, somewhat human, at this point in time, maybe-

I saw the fin before anything else, really. It was a quick glimpse over Sanji's shoulder, but there was absolutely no mistaking what that was. I'd gotten pretty good at recognising the damn things after Arlong. The dark shape moved in towards Zoro's back, bypassing the cloudy blood entirely, and I settled with trying to convey a warning by looking at it really hard.

Was it working? Shit, I don't think it was working. Well, fuck, I suppose the Straw Hats couldn't all reach Raftel in every reality.

Bummer. I guess today was the day I was getting traumatised.

"Yip!"

Oh, yeah, and it was all _this_ asshole's fault… hmm? Dumbass Fruit user that jumped in after him? Uhh, nope, never heard of the guy.

I have to tell you, having so much snark stored up for an occasion and not being able to use any of it was probably one of the hardest things that I've ever had to deal with in my death. Between the entropy that wouldn't let me move whatsoever, and the body that had about as much structural integrity as the plot I was being forced through by some mad prick who obviously had too much time on his hands, I could tell that my mood had maybe one major impact left in it before it would shift dramatically and likely send me toppling over the edge.

If there even an edge there anymore, but that was beside the point.

The shark – larger than anything I'd ever seen in my life, bordering on something straight out of prehistoric times – closed the distance to Zoro's back. The man had absolutely no idea, and I fought to close my eyes, to raise a hand, shout a warning, do anything at all-

"Yip!"

It bumped against his back, as though it wasn't even aware that he was there, and when Zoro drifted forward, some of his shirt remained connected to a tooth protruding from the shark's mouth. It flicked its fin, once, and Zoro was being pulled to the surface at a speed higher than I honestly thought he would be capable of on his own.

"Yip!"

A large shape obscured my vision for a moment, and once it cleared, Sanji was being herded away by a shark that looked just as big as the other one. His eyes were flickering between the shark bumping him towards the surface with its nose and me so quickly that I was actually amazed he wasn't making himself dizzy.

"Yip!"

Oh, and now I was going up- okay, what.

I would have taken a deep breath – so I could start screaming, but then water would get all up in my lungs and that would be a fucking pain to clear up later. So instead I settled on staring at the approaching surface, not feeling an ounce of gratitude for whatever turnabout this was, and trying to identify the species of fish that slapped into me on the way so I could swear eternal vengeance against all of its brethren. The ocean would be gone by the time I was done. Not even an ocean planet's worth of water could drown my white-hot anger.

Not even a second later, my face broke the surface. I inhaled to start screaming bad words in every language I knew, but then I didn't stop rising, which led to me kind of forgetting what I'd been planning on doing. The good news was, now that I was out of the water, I had free range of motion, which I used to place my puppy carefully on the ground next to me, and then take a look at exactly what it was that I'd landed on-

It was a Sea King. Probably not too big by regular Sea King standards, but it had a fin going about halfway down its body that resembled a shark's, the eyes that I was sitting in between were black and beady, much like a shark's, and its skin was super slippery like _wait no_ _fuck fuck shit I'm falling again nooooo-_

A rubbery limb wrapped around my chest before I could fall into the ocean, and that may have led to the first time I was ever grateful that Luffy intervened without being asked to. Unfortunately, my spine crumbled in on itself when he yanked me on board, because it was apparently being held together by spit and hope, and my neck snapped backwards after I hit my head against the mast. I wonder if this was how Krieg felt right before I actually made him useful for once in his miserable li… uh, death?

"Fuck sakes, Luffy…" Peeling myself away from the mast, I cracked my head back into place, grimacing at the sound of vertebrae linking back where they should have been. I got several pops out of my back once I was done stretching, finishing off my little episode by grabbing my head with both hands and slamming it to the side, rather than wait for my neck to do it. "You're hard to hate, but you're even harder to love…"

 _"Cask!"_

Hmm, odd, Nami was talking to me. She hadn't been doing that ever since we left Cocoyashi. Understandable, truly; you wouldn't want to draw the attention of a fiend like me. I might accidentally break something while trying to thrash out of your grip. Like your heart, or my own ribs.

Checking over the damage that had been done to the mast and deciding that it wasn't actually my problem, I turned on my heel, looking up… and up… and _up_ at the behemoth that was towering above our humble little caravel. It was looking down… and down… and _down_ at us, though the part of myself that was starved of and desperate for attention told me that it was really looking at _me._

Well alright then.

The rest of the crew were… wait, where were those other two guys? You know, they had the swords and shit? What were their names, they were Jimmy and Suzaku? No, that didn't sound right. Jeffrey and Sasuke?

Where were Jeffrey and Sasuke? Did we leave them behind? I mean, it didn't affect me any either way, but they didn't even say goodbye. How rude, I thought we were friends.

Meh, oh well. Their loss. The rest of us were still here and seemed to have formed a loose semicircle on that side of the ship. They'd even left me an open spot, between where Usopp was shivering in his boots and Zoro was splayed out across the deck, gasping for air and trying to act like his chest wasn't currently made up of about half salt and half stupid. Luffy was in the centre of them all, his arms dangling by his sides and his hands curled into loose fists. Sanji stood on his other side, his hands in his pockets and his legs slightly bent. He was also soaking wet, a trait that he, Zoro, and I all had in common at the moment.

Nami, the brave idiot, was standing on his other side, and had turned her back on the leviathan to shoot me a look that suggested that this was my fault. I couldn't even get annoyed with her, she was probably right. Two sharks and a Sea King that kind of looked like a shark showing up when we needed them most? Well, I wonder where this could be going.

My brief surveillance done, I tilted my head back up to catch the Sea King's eyes. It seemed to have been waiting for me. Good.

Now what?

…

…

I blinked at it.

It blinked back.

Alright, good start.

Slowly, I raised a hand and splayed my fingers. "…Hi."

"…"

I sucked in some air through the gap in my front teeth, the air around us silent except for that small squeaking sound. Nobody was really doing much of anything, though, at the edge of my peripherals, I could see Luffy watching this strange encounter with… were those stars in his eyes? I almost broke my stare to check, but before I could, the Sea King snorted through its… did this thing have _eight_ slitted nostrils? Uh, let's see, one two three fo- looked like it, yep.

A fine mist of seawater clouded in the air. Thankfully, it was so fine that it looked like it was going up, rather than down. It tilted its head to the side, and I nodded seriously, wracking my brains for a means of bullshitting my way through this one because I had _no_ fucking clue if it was trying to talk to me.

I was only vaguely away of Usopp hiding behind me, both hands on my shoulder as he poked his bushy head around my neck to see what was happening.

"…You're absolutely right." I spoke slowly, a fraction of the speed of which I was thinking. Say something profound, don't make it too difficult to understand, it is a fish after all... "The… stars are certainly…" _FUCK._ "bright tonight."

I could hear the shifting fabric as everyone looked up. The two sharks in the water, who I'd not been paying any attention to but were apparently still there, did their best to look up. I held the Sea King's stare, silently daring it through an intricate eyebrow dance to look up. To look up and tell me that the sun was literally directly overhead. To show such flagrant insubordination while my eyes were directed on it. Do it, motherfucker. Question the Shark God.

Well jokes on you, because guess what that thing even is. Yeah, that's right.

The region above one of its beady eyes twitched. It was calling my bluff, shit! I was going to lose a battle of wits with a fucking _fish!_ Wait, no, it wasn't looking anywhere. I could salvage this, this could work, I just needed to play it cool.

I slid my hands into my pockets, and- wait, what the fuck was that?

I rustled my left hand again, feeling as well as hearing the piece of paper inside that pocket crinkle. My eyebrows furrowed slightly, gaze flickering between the Sea King's eyes as I tried to remember ever putting that in there. I… didn't. At least, if I did, then it obviously wasn't important enough to remember. Besides, who else could have gotten their hand close enough to that pocket to slip it in there… wait a second.

"Cask?" Nami's voice perfectly coincided with my realisation, ironically enough. I tilted my head slightly in her direction, indicating that I was listening even if I wasn't looking at her. It was also so I could actually hear what she was saying because she was speaking a bit too quietly for it to be clear. "Not that I don't trust your judgment, which I don't, by the way, but _what are you doing?"_

I slipped my hands back out of my pockets, choosing instead to hook my thumbs into their openings. My challenging expression was kept up, even as a small draft picked up and pushed the lungful of smoke Sanji had just blown out into my face.

It was about that time when I had a fun little idea for how to proceed. Well, fun for me, at least.

"Well, it's fairly simple, really." I took another step closer to the railing. Usopp's strained gasp was all the warning I had before the sniper was wrapping himself around me, babbling words that were both unintelligible and ignored. It was in that moment when I saw how unimpressed the Sea King was, that I found myself empathising with a fish. Eh, he'd grow out of it eventually. Hopefully, before he stopped wearing a shirt.

"Back on that last island, you remember that one, yeah?" Sarcasm belonged in every conversation. The lowest form of wit indeed, but it would be rude if I wasn't at the same level as everyone else. "Well, something came up. I don't blame you for not remembering, it only happened once or twice. Hardly anyone even mentioned it."

I'm pretty sure that slapping sound was her facepalming. I also think Zoro may have been choking on his own blood, the noises coming from that part of the ship were getting a bit gruesome. I mean, I just saved you from drowning, dude, have some respect.

I shot the Sea King my most deranged grin. I'd been complimented on it in the past. The Sea King didn't seem all that impressed; that was fine. That was completely fine.

"I found something out about myself that day." My right hand ghosted over my chest, my left pushing my hair out of my eyes. I could feel all eyes on me. The Sea King was beginning to lean in a little closer. Usopp's whimpering was winding down some.

"Lucas DeMitri Cask always knew he was destined for greatness one day. He-"

"Cask, stop. Forget I asked."

Idly, I began to brush down my shirt, utterly ignoring everything Nami was saying. " _I_ knew there was something that made me more than those around me."

Some people would say that there were better places for theatrics than in front of some giant sea monster. Those people were also no fun and didn't want me to live now that I was dead. Besides, this was a learning exercise.

"Ever since I was young, there has been this power coursing through my veins." I took another step forward, tapping the bridge of my nose with my right middle finger. My left hand was clasped on my right elbow, keeping it aloft while I tilted my head to the early afternoon sun would glare across the lenses. "So deep it runs that it has remained dormant, and I have had to touch the bottom of the ocean floor before it awoke from its terrifying slumber."

"Please stop walking _towards_ the scary monster!" Usopp hissed into my ear, still clinging to my back. I ignored him; he was making his choice in this.

 _Deep breath, don't start laughing, don't get_ eaten-

"COWER, WATER SERPENT!" Ripping my glasses away from my face, I hurled them straight up, where they burst into countless sparkly particles. Usopp gave a tiny scream as I twisted to the side, while I clenched my fists, chancing a glance over the rest of the crew to see how they were taking this.

Zoro and Sanji were both giving me a look that I knew meant they were questioning my sanity. Nami seemed a few steps away from pulling out hair, and Luffy was staring at… well, his eyes were so wide and filled with so many stars that it was equally likely that he could see everything or nothing.

Man, this was fun. No wonder villains did it all the time.

"SHARKS ARE MY BIRTHRIGHT! MY WILLING SUBJECTS, MY WORTHY SUCCESSORS!" I managed to time it so that when I turned back to face the Sea King, the sparkles from my glasses that hadn't dissipated were beginning to fall around me. This fucking fish was getting quite the show.

"I AM YOUR KING, YOUR FATHER, YOUR _GOD!_ " I threw my arms wide, not having to force the wide grin onto my face whatsoever. The Sea King had stopped blinking at this point, settling on a blank stare that could rival anything Nojiko had ever given me. I was surprised Usopp's weight was still there, in all honesty, because this was likely going to get me eaten.

Meh, his decision, not mine. Time for the Grand Finale.

"I AM THE SHARK GOD, HIGHEST DOMINION OF OCEAN BEASTS!" I clenched my hands and threw my arms into the air, reaching for the sky. I can't be sure, but I think the birds that were flying overhead started moving a little bit faster. "I AM THE SHARK GOD, AND I COMMAND YOU TO ** _KNEEL!_** "

My shout echoed out across the ocean. Waves crashed upon my declaration, trying to swallow it up as only the ocean could. Even so, the words traveled, down into the watery depths and up into the clouds. They reached out to the Sea King, which… did nothing.

At all.

It was like the thing was frozen or something.

"Uhm…" I dropped my hands, looking around to see what had happened. The two sharks that had gotten Zoro and Sanji to the surface were gone, apparently having no interest in what I was saying. The crew was in much the same positions as they had been before, though Luffy's eyes had lost some of that sparkle. Turning back to the Sea King, I could see that it was still staring at me, its head tilted slightly to the side in bewilderment.

"… _Riiiiight,_ you don't have knees, gotcha." I bumped my forehead with the palm of my hand, before throwing my arms back into the air so suddenly that I actually managed to launch Usopp off my back. "Then, in that case, I COMMAND YOU TO **_BOW!_** "

The words stopped echoing a lot sooner than they had the last time. The Sea King still did nothing but watch.

"You know, bow? Like, fold yourself in half a bit forward and then you kinda… alright, that's too complicated. In that case, I COMMAND YOU TO… **_SIT!_** " Nothing. "Shit, sorry, forgot you're a fish. Uhh, **_DANCE!_** " Nope, nothing. "Fuck you're dumb- eh, **_SWIM IN A CIRCLE?_** " A stray wave tapped against the Going Merry's hull. Aside from that, there was no movement in the ocean at all.

I dropped my arms slightly so I could comfortably return the stupid monster's blank stare. "I command you to do absolutely nothing and not move in any way whatsoever."

The fucking thing tilted its head even further to the side and blinked at me.

"Screw it." I turned around, dismissively waving a hand over my shoulder as I marched away from the rail and towards the kitchen. "Thanks for the save, really 'preciate it. Now fuck off."

Why did fish have to be so unintelligent? Why did I have to become a God for some of them? It was unfair. Why couldn't I be the God of dolphins or something- right. Never mind that then.

Still, if nothing else, I suppose this was a learning experience. The title of Shark God apparently meant diddly squat. Couldn't talk to sharks, or if I could, then it wasn't in the obvious way where I used words and shit. It was nice to find that out here and now, rather than sometime in the future when I'm backed into a cor-

 _"Yip!"_

Shit. I knew I was forgetting something.

I paused right before I could make it through the kitchen door, my hand resting against the doorway so I could duck inside. The call had been far away, but if I wasn't mistaken…

I turned back, just in time to watch as the Sea King began to lower its head. Everyone on deck tensed slightly, but there was no hostility in the gigantic creature's movements. No, if anything, as most of its body disappeared and it aligned its skull with the railing of the Going Merry, it was being exceedingly gentle for what it was.

A little black shape shot off the top of the Sea King's head, yapping at the top of its lungs as it zoomed through Luffy's legs and made a leap for me. I couldn't help but smile as the puppy that had started this mess connected with my chest and sent me sprawling into the kitchen; enthusiasm like that was just too damn infectious to be fair.

"Hey puppy!" One advantage of making your own dog out of soul bits and demon food; no saliva. The tiny dog was licking everywhere it could reach, leaving nothing behind to show for it except a strange feeling under my skin. It was like pins and needles, but warmer. "What were you doing on a sailor's tale's head out there, huh? What were you doing?"

"Yip!"

"Ahh, of course. You're so lucky you caught up to me while I was in a better mood than before." I lifted the dog up with one hand, pushing myself to my feet while it hung in front of my face. It was still licking everywhere, trying to catch my other hand as I tussled the top of its head. Hmm, the appearance of fur, but not substance. Hypo-allergenic? That's a plus. "I was going to see if I could kill you and eat you, yes I was! I was so annoyed at myself, and then I was so annoyed at you, yes I was!"

"…Yip?"

"Yep. You were almost din-dins, yes you were!" Tucking the now-stiff dog underneath my arm, I made my way out of the kitchen. With my free hand, I worked on getting a cigarette out of the packet in my pocket, grinding some Armament together in the palm of my hand to light it. I passed Zoro, who had fallen asleep where he lay and sidestepped Luffy as he charged forward, arms outstretched to grab the dog out of my grip. He tripped over his own feet and crashed into Zoro, and a split second later there were swords out and a chase going on around the deck. Ahh, too easy.

Beneath where I'd crashed into the mast was where I decided to set up shop. The dog didn't move all that much as I set him down, tail swishing back and forth slowly. He got a quick scratch behind the ear before I leant back, propping myself against the mast and taking a long drag. One leg came up to my chest, the opposite arm draping over that knee. My other hand tapped out an unsteady rhythm on the wood, which my foot followed along to.

"So… who wants a bad-ass battle mode form?" I asked the dog, trying to sound as bored as I could. It tilted its head to the side, ears perked up slightly. My expression lasted a few seconds before it broke, jubilation lighting up my face as I scooped up the dog and ruffled the hair on its belly.

"You do! Yes you do! Grahhhhh!"

The dog yapped at me, rolling over and over again. Whenever I stopped, it would pounce on my hand, holding it down until I wriggled my way free and renewed my assault. I'm not sure how long I played around with it, but by the time I was lying on my back and it was standing on my chest triumphantly, I had finished the last of my cigarette and buried my hands back in my pockets.

 _Crssh._

Both the puppy and I looked down at my pocket. It had its head cocked to the side in confusion, but I at least knew what it was. I'd forgotten about seeing what was on it in the heat of the moment, but now that I had some free time…

"Give me five minutes before we start," I told the dog, getting a swish of its tail in response.

The paper was wet when I pulled it out of my pocket, crumbled into a loose ball rather than folded. I could see some ink on some parts that had scrunched over, a few letters here and there in handwriting that I didn't recognise. Unfolding it, I could see that much of the message had been damaged, though it only got to the point of unreadable about halfway through. That still left me a fairly solid chunk of text to get through.

The puppy whined, nudging at my hand with his nose. Weak constitution. We would have to work on that, otherwise it would never survive the winter.

"No no, not now." I'm not sure if it was instinct or experience that always transformed my voice into a pitchy baby's drawl whenever I spoke to an animal that was smaller than me. All I knew it that it usually clashed horribly with whatever it was that I was saying to that animal. "I'll make it so you can crush their skulls and drink their blood later. Right now I have to find out who violated me, yes I do."

A small grunt echoed over from the… were they oranges or were they tangerines? I never could tell the difference. Either way, it was a feminine voice, and it carried over from where Nami was transplanting some trees into the ship. If the small flashes of blond were any indication, Sanji was doing the heavy lifting.

"'It'll be fine', he said. 'Let the crazy island hobo on the ship, what could go wrong? He won't punch anybody in the balls or create life from nowhere or break your sister's heart, that's ridiculous!' Damn rubber brained idiots and stupid smartass sarcastic dead bastards, grumble grumble…"

* * *

 **A/N:** I'm taking a break.

I could go into reason after reason why I want to kick back and relax. Honestly, I doubt many of you would really care to read them. So, instead I'll be completely honest with you: I'm debating whether I want to keep writing at all. And I don't just mean this story, I mean in general.

So, I'm taking some time off. I'll plot, I'll write omakes for some other stories, I'll screw around with one-off concepts and other silly little things to idle away time. And at the end of it, whether it takes a few weeks or a few months, I'll have my answer.

Thanks for sticking with the story for this long. I've got plans I want to put in motion, scenes I can't wait to write. But for now, I'm shoving my head firmly back into the clouds and getting a few breaths of fresh air. Do me a favour and don't bother me about this, kay? Because I'm not going to answer any questions about my situation or the plot of the story.

I'll see you all around, no doubt.


	21. Chapter 21

**A/N:** Hi.

* * *

 _I could set my watch to the promises you break, you know that?_

 _A sentence into this thing, and I've already gotten to the point where I should be backtracking and apologising. Well, you know what? No. No, fuck you, I'm not apologising for anything. You have any idea how long I looked for you? How many things I want to say that CAN'T BE SAID THROUGH A NOTE?_

 _You suck, Cask. If I knew what was going to come of it, I would have kicked you into the fire as soon as you asked me to be your beard. You're infuriating. I regret meeting you. How dare you make me feel emotion while I'm this tired._

 _That being said, I'm still writing this, because at this point I'm well aware that I'll only catch up with you when you're leaving. I'm going to do something drastic when I see you, and hopefully this note will make it into your pocket, or your hand. Your life, at the very least. Last thing I need is to become the subject of one of your stories without context._

 _Look, you're sailing the thing, so it isn't my place to tell you this, but the world is a pretty big place. Your Captain wants to get to the end of the Grand Line, and I'll be honest, I think he'll be able to make it. Nami does too, and I know she'll be going with you. You'll be going to the other side of the world, and I don't want you to leave before I can tell you that I don't love you. I like you, more than I like a lot of other people, and this last decade notwithstanding, the time I spent with you was probably the most fun I can remember having._

 _Really, I've known you for… what, a collective day? Not even? And I spent most of that bewildered and confused anyway? And yet here I am, wishing I could keep living those three days of partying for the rest of my life. Sheesh, am I sad or what?_

 _That being said, I won't ask you to stay. I doubt you would. But, after Luffy finds the One Piece and you've all accomplished everything you wanted, can I ask you to visit? It'll be great, I'll introduce you to my new husband and the ugly litter of children that managed to crawl out of me. You may have to get a bit lucky in the regard, though, in my experience children seem intent on murdering themselves in the most contrived ways possible. Best to not keep me waiting too long, probably._

 _Of course, if you want those children to be yours, that can be arranged… if you feel like kidnapping them for a ransom I'll likely never pay, that is._

 _Man, I didn't even realise that I was this tired. I wrote this note to let you know that you're an awful human being, and now I'm prattling on about children. Yuck._

 _Oh, one more thing. After I gave up on looking for you, I went and memorised the Shark God prophecy. You forgot about that, didn't you? Because if so, then I'm not surprised. You never did seem to take it very seriously. Anyway, I'll write it out here to end this letter off. See you later, ma-_

 **XxX**

I had to read through the note three times before it actually sank in, how much the universe seemed to be conspiring against me at every turn. I mean, there was bad luck, and then there was leaving the rest of a message basically untouched and soiling the important contents beyond recognition. What the actual fuck were those chances?

Technically it was my fault for jumping into the water in the first place, but damn. Just take my lunch money or shove me into a locker, leave the actual important shit alone.

The next perusal was a minute later, after I'd stewed on my own indignation a bit. This time was so I could properly pay attention to everything Nojiko was saying. At least, it was probably Nojiko. It'd be pretty strange if it was anyone else.

The third and fourth times passed much the same. The fifth time, I let the puppy read it with me, just to see if it could make more sense of it than I could.

"Yip!"

Apparently, that too was a no-go.

"Alright, so…" I rubbed my forehead, wondering when the migraine had decided to pop up. It was so sudden that I couldn't be sure I hadn't just had it the entire time, and was only realising now. "She says she hates me… but! She spends most of the time I'm on the island with me, _wants_ to ask me to stay, makes comments about children with no prompting, memorises an entire prophecy for me on the off chance that it even _does_ apply to _anybody_ , and to top it all off, she kisses me."

The back of my head gave a painful throb. Probably a premonition of what Nami was going to do to me at some point in the future, if I had to guess.

"Yip!"

Ah, to be as young and naïve as this dog that I fucking made.

"No, that can't be it. I gave her the puppy _after_ everything except the kiss, and even that was pre-emptive." You know, at least this kind of made me feel almost… normal. The last time I'd agonised over a girl to this degree was when I was eight, and even then, she'd been a teacher. Fuck your failing grade, Ms. Rose, you asked for a hundred words on an interesting meal we once had. Who gives a fuck if a worm isn't food, at least I wasn't one of the dumb assholes that gave you a single sentence.

Fucking Billy can't even spell 'week', but he still got my A+. Bullshit, bitch specifically targeted my perfect record.

…Okay, so there _may_ have been some other cases after that. But they were very few, very far in-between, and largely uninteresting in the grand scheme of things.

"Yip!"

I had to physically shake my head to get myself back to the present. Once that was done, I made sure the dog was looking at me, before rolling my eyes hard enough to hear them moving. Not an easy feat, I'll have you know.

"Yes, of course, that's brilliant. Totally what happened. Absolutely." I sighed through my nose, annoyed that I couldn't hold it against the dog. It was, technically, only about an hour old, if even that. Not exactly criminally responsible. "No. Not a chance. You don't get pretty girls by spending a couple of days with them and then offering to make them a pet. That's how you get restraining orders."

"Yip!"

It was me barking at that point, a short laugh that should have only been heard echoing out from the gates of Hell. "Divine intervention? Ha! That's a good one." It was a pretty funny thing to imagine, though. Damn multiversal existential entities that grant people power, never caring about anything that makes them who they are. Just like the shitty stories I wrote when I was fifteen. It even starred myself as the omniscient overseer of events… the more things change, the more they stay the same.

That fanfic was dead now, like me.

…But what if…?

"No." Not even I hated myself to do this, not a chance. Shaking my head at the mere thought, I folded the letter so that the line in the paper were actually straight, sliding it back into my pocket. The dog whined and tilted its head to the side, its ears drooping slightly as I attempted a smile and more than likely failed. "Just a thought that I'm not going to let myself entertain. Last thing I need is for more… crazy, to get stuck up in here."

In the end, it all came down to how much I felt like agonising over my own stupid, worthless thoughts today. And contrary to almost the entirety of my past, I discovered that I didn't even find it within myself to do that.

Quite simply, that note terrified me. Not with what it was saying, nor with the sentiment behind it, but purely because of what it could make me do if it caught me in the correct mood.

"Yip!"

This dog was quickly becoming one of the best decisions I'd ever not tried to make. I could almost feel like some of the melancholy was drained through a tiny hole that had been poked through my ribs with that single barb.

"Yeah, very funny." _Don't think about it, you're obvious not good at doing that._ "You want solar laser eyes or not?"

"YIP!"

Ah, his first curse word. I'm so fucking proud.

 **XxX**

"Uh, hey, Cask, are you the… _What_ are you doing?"

Now, on the one hand, I was a bit annoyed that Usopp had decided to interrupt the delicate process.

On the other hand, I was holding a glowing dog's head open with a thumb and index finger and poking around inside of where its brain should have been, so his question was entirely justified. Plus, I had barely any concept of time on the best of days – and anytime I said otherwise I was speaking entirely out of my ass and you can't trust me – so for all I knew, I could have been in here for hours already. Hell, maybe _I_ was interrupting _him._

The puppy yipped. Usopp yipped right back, which was also understandable, seeing as the puppy's entire lower half sort of unhinged like a snake's jaw in order to make the mouth to yip with. Disturbing, but oh well, I'd seen worse.

"My Fruit is Lens-Lens, and lenses reflect light _and_ magnify stuff, so now I'm trying to see whether or not I can reflect light in such a way that it'll intensify while moving where I want to go, to the point where it makes things blow up with a single puppy stare."

Mad, they'd called me! And they were probably entirely correct, because no person in their right mind would probably attempt such a thing.

Who is they, you ask?

Eh, you know, them.

"So, what's up?"

In the reflection of the lens that I was trying to shove through the dog's eyeball (and spectacularly failing, but shut up), I saw Usopp stiffen slightly, and then look to the side. One finger came up to scratch at his cheek, which looked suspiciously red.

"Ah, yeah, about that… everyone else just finished eating, and Sanji told me to come bring your portion to you," Usopp lifted his other hand, which was laden down with a plate that seemed to be holding a little piece of heaven, "and I only just now remembered that you don't eat and _pleasedon'thurtmeforaccidentallyteasingyouIcompletelyforgotandit'sSanji'sfaultanyway!"_

Damn, never knew Usopp could talk that quickly. Where could I get a copy of his mixtape?

Slowly, I withdrew my hand from my currently failing project and turned around. The dog whined as my attention was drawn away from it, which I ignored pretty much entirely. "Why would I hurt you?"

Usopp hid the plate behind his back. I think he was trying to come across as inconspicuous. It didn't work. "Because you hurt people?"

"Is that a question or an answer?"

Usopp took a step back, towards the door. The dinner plate _thunked_ very audibly against the door frame. For his sake, I pretended that I hadn't heard it.

"…An answer?"

I raised an eyebrow at him, very deliberately turning back to my puppy. Nudging the bridge of my nose, I called forth a pair of Haki glasses, weaving another lens through my fingers and pretty much just poking around with the general hope that something positive would happen because of it.

I angled the lens towards the door, and caught a flash of soul. Odd, I would have assumed that Usopp would have fucked off the first chance he got, seeing as I _had_ all but verbally dismissed him.

Judging from the way it looked like he was trying to see around my shoulder, however, I could only guess that he was… curious, would be my best bet. More power to him, he'd probably not come across a lot of Devil Fruit manipulation on his hick island. Besides, I hadn't even half a fucking clue what I was really doing, so what was the worst that could come of his presence? Lost concentration?

May as well make the most of it, I suppose.

"Speaking of questions and answers…" With a flex of my fingers, the lens I'd been holding shattered. Sighing through my nose, I flicked another one into existence, continuing on as though the interruption had never happened. "Mind if I ask you something that you don't have to answer?"

"E-eh? Uh, sur-"

The finger that I had been using to prod everything into place inside the dog exploded. Well, to be more specific, the lens that I was trying to place flared up with orange light out of nowhere, and detonated. It took the finger that I had been using to prod everything into place with away at the base, spinning me around with enough force to separate the bone and fling it, Haki still covered, directly in Usopp's direction.

Huh, this felt familiar. What had happened last time- **_OH NO._**

I wish I could have seen what was happening better in that moment. Alas, with the glasses on, everything was being presented to me as a viscous blob of what could have possibly been colour. I couldn't tell if Usopp's eyes or mouth were moving, but I could tell that he'd still not deigned to get the fuck out of the way.

Okay, so maybe asking anyone to dodge a bullet was a little unfair. It hadn't exactly worked for Arlong, but at least he'd gotten out of it alive. Maybe. Possibly? Hell if I knew. That last island had been a fucking trip and a half.

Hmm, speaking of Arlong, I'm sure something had happened there. I'd been able to retrieve the… had it been my finger or an arrow? Even if it had happened only about half a week ago, it felt like months had passed. Though if I was going to bring up weird time inconsistencies, then for all intents and purposes, Usopp should probably have been dead from a shot to the head a few hundred times over by now.

Look, I had a lot of shit to question right now. It was keeping him alive, so it could get in the fucking line while I tried to head it off.

Hahaha, head it off. Ah, I'm funny, and one of my… friends? Acquaintances? Crewmates. One of my crewmates was about to die. But I'm hilarious.

Alright, shit. What do they always tell you to do in situations of inevitable peril? I'm fairly sure I wasn't panicking, so that was out. Stop, drop, and roll? That might have helped Usopp, if he had the time, and that finger was really takings its sweet time, wasn't it?

Ah, analyse the situation, that was a good one. Now, let's see… there was Usopp, still as fucked as ever. There was the finger… was that a Haki trail coming from it? Hmm, yes, that was almost certainly a trail of Haki coming out of my finger as it flew. Oddly enough, it didn't look like it was Armament; far too pale, far too wispy. I wasn't aware that I could produce anything _but_ Armament.

Wait, Haki came in 'colours', didn't it? Maybe this was some sort of colourless state that it would regress to in certain situations… ah, fuck it, I could theory-craft on my own time. Still, that did give me an idea.

The invisible wisps stretched between my finger and my stump. It was like a cloud of smog, holes every now and then, but ultimately connected and ever-expanding. It wasn't Armament, but it still presumably Haki. Technically, it was _my_ Haki. So, there was nothing to suggest that I couldn't turn it _back into_ Armament. I'd done something similar during the Arlong situation, so I knew it was possible. Whether I could do it consciously was the real question.

Well, it wasn't like I would have the time to come up with another solution. Judging from the breakneck speed my finger was travelling at, Usopp only had roughly one year left to live. He probably could have added a millennium or two if he decided to lean back and get comfortable before his face was poked inside-out.

…It _really_ should have been a problem, how easily I could joke about this shit. Were there therapists in this world? Because if so, I had a good inkling that I could make one of them very rich indeed. They'd likely dob me in after admitting to Krieg and Nezumi, but I could surely play the part of golden goose well enough for the first few sessions.

No, wait, they'd probably pay me for Krieg. It was the mouse fuckwit I had to worry about… What was I thinking about again?

Oh, right.

"Yip!"

Fuck, hang on, I'm getting there!

Alright, focus. Try to flex the not-muscle that is the not-control I had over the not-Armament. Get it to spread, no room to shove a lens so I couldn't cheat my way out of this one-

I flicked my hand, and almost reeled back as everything around me lurched. Waves rose up around the ship as my own glasses were knocked off, moving fast enough to hit the ground before they could dissipate. Usopp was blown completely off his feet, which was likely the only thing that saved his life after the finger sped up to the point of near impossible to follow. The Haki caught it in less than an instant anyway, reeling it back down to me as I blinked the sudden spots from my vision and tried to get a good look at our surroundings.

I would be very mad if we were under attack once again. After the amount of shit that had gone down recently, I fucking reserved the right to enjoy things at my own gods forsaken pace. I didn't care if it killed me again.

"Cask!" I heard Nami screaming from… somewhere out of sight. The ship lurched again, this time tilting to one side to accommodate the sharp angle we'd turned at. "Stop knocking the ship off course, or so help me…!"

Yeah, sure, her sister kisses me and suddenly _everything_ is my fault. I waved my hand dismissively in what I hoped was at least vaguely her direction – and almost knocked myself over when my arm snapped out with enough force to blur out of view. Another giant plume of water rose in front of us, easily dwarfing the Going Merry as it moved off to explore over the horizon.

"CASK!"

"Sorry!" I called back absently, giving my arm a careful once-over. Hmm, covered in Haki, muscles strained, lemme just- yep, fist clenched and showing absolutely no signs of moving on its own. Seems like my arm didn't get the 'not panicking' memo. What percentage was this, even?

I could hear my bones creaking as I forced my arm to relax. It was even more difficult than I'd been anticipating. While I worked on wrenching my fingers open with my free hand, I turned to where Usopp had been knocked on his ass, intent on pretending absolutely nothing had happened and mainly hoping he would play along.

"So, yeah, that question. You ever regret joining the Straw Hats?"

"More and more every day…" Usopp rubbed at his eyes with the palms of his hands, before stilling. In a display of acrobatic excellence, he rolled into a sitting position with what must have been the muscles in his ass, crossing his legs in front of him and clasping at both of his ankles. "Wait, do you regret joining us?"

"No, I'm asking for a friend." Usopp and I exchanged blank looks. Either he didn't pick up on the sarcasm, or he didn't appreciate it. I broke away first, rolling my eyes up until I was looking at the tip of the sail.

"When I died..."

That probably wasn't the best way to start off that explanation, but it wasn't like I had all that much to lose. My attention was pretty much for naught either way, Usopp didn't even blink at my words.

I turned back to him slowly, having expected a gasp or a whimper or… _something_ in acknowledgement to what I just said. Instead, I ended up getting the very same blank stare that he'd been giving me before. None of his facial muscles had to even twitch.

"...Really?" I couldn't tell if I was impressed or disappointed. "No reaction at all to that?"

Usopp just shrugged. "It's actually not that difficult to imagine someone killed you, then resurrected you to kill you again. Especially now that I know you better."

 _Oi._

"...Moving on." Reaching into my pocket, I folded the piece of paper that Nojiko had slipped me between my fingers, flicking it in Usopp's direction. It bounced off his nose, and he watched with crossed eyes as it drifted down into his hand. The cord of Haki that I'd managed to wrap around his wrist, to move that hand into position in the first place, receded back into my body as he unfolded the note and began to read.

I turned my attention back to my puppy while he did so, spinning a new web of lenses between my fingers. So far, I'd made some progress… maybe. Look, wiring a whole matrix of bullshit into a pseudo-living being's head was difficult enough when taken at face value. Who would have thought that making explosives that _didn't_ blow up in my face would be so difficult?

I had to figure out how to handle the lenses in such a way to only let the sunlight travel in one direction, but also test if they could be overloaded in a dire situation, while also figuring out how to integrate a point that could discharge the energy in a controlled manner, on top of squeezing in panels that would be taking in the solar energy in the first place. Some places would have to intensify the light into something that could kill people in seconds instead of years, and some places would restrict movement if I so much as _considered_ construction. I'd only been trying for a couple of hours, and already, I may as well have been throwing shit at a wall. It was, in every sense of the word, a crapshoot.

"Aaaaaand…" With a twist of my wrist, I'd buried the new configuration somewhere the dog's heart would have been. It fit perfectly, like it had been made specifically to sit there. "There-"

Without warning, the dog's entire body crumbled. Not even a yip left its mouth before it was a particularly shiny puddle on the ground. What was left of its body then darkened considerably, going even beyond the point of what I could have reliably called Armament.

"...Ah."

Well, that wasn't light. I would go so far as to say that was the entire opposite of light.

"So!" I cleared my throat far too loudly for it to be anything other than uncomfortable, laying a hand on the rapidly steaming pile of nonsense in front of me and sucking it back in through my palm. Note to self, there appeared to be some form of decomposition at work here, forming a mist that almost felt viscous to touch. Yet more bullshit that I didn't understand, hooray.

Did I overload the Haki with the Fruit? Wasn't the whole point of Haki to nullify Devil Fruits?

I dismissed that thought with a wave of my hand, also blowing away the last of the odd mist. Usopp was still staring at the note when I turned back to him, his lips tilted downwards in what could have almost been an exaggerated manner, had it been anyone else. As it stood, I was fairly certain that expression was just his regular frown.

"Would you have stayed with her?"

Ah, yes, that million dollar question. I grimaced before I could help it, which Usopp absolutely must have seen before the expression was wiped from my face.

"Don't give me that look. You asked me if it was alright to regret joining Luffy, and then you showed me this note." Usopp waved the note in my face for emphasis. I snatched it out of his hand before something could go horribly wrong, smoothing it over and folding it back into my pocket carefully. Unperturbed, Usopp crossed his arms and legs, leaning back in a way that implied he'd been spending way too much time with Luffy recently. "So, would you have stayed with her?"

Would I have stayed with her? Well, the answer to that was obvious, was it not?

"No, I wouldn't."

Usopp recoiled, his chin in the air as though he'd been struck. Yep, definitely spending too much time with Luffy.

He reeled himself in, his mouth already open. I clamped my hand over it before he could start firing off questions, because there wasn't a very good chance that I would be able to answer a large majority of them.

"Look, Usopp, it's…" I parsed my extensive vocabulary for an explanation that would make sense and satisfy. It didn't work out too well.

"It's complicated, alright?"

Usopp rolled his eyes at me, bringing a hand up and pulling at my fingers. Distracted as I was, I didn't realise I wasn't moving them until he tapped at my forehead with one hand while gesturing wildly at his predicament with the other.

I was not sheepish in my movements. I was merely abashed- no, that didn't help.

"We've got hours until we hit land," His mouth was already moving before I'd even managed to peel my hand away entirely. He was awfully chatty today, all things considered. A holdover from the party, perhaps? "I know you can elaborate."

Oh yes, elaboration was the key. However couldn't I have seen that before now?

That was sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell.

My head impacted the deck where my puppy had met its unfortunate demise minutes earlier. The movement was something I consciously both planned and executed, if rather abrupt. I just didn't feel all that much like sitting up any longer.

"Fine." I tucked my hands behind my head, spinning out another lens as I did so. With a muted glow that barely lasted long enough to be noticable, a Haki-puppy was curling up on my stomach, settling his little head on his tiny paws. This one was a little smaller than the other one had been, but it was still technically the same exact construct. Not to mention I'd been feeling a bit lonely, and this seemed to be the best I could do on such short notice. "I'm warning you right now that I'm about to drop some heavy shit on your head, last chance to back out."

I expected a stammered response and the rapid retreat of footsteps. What I got instead was Usopp settling on the deck beside me, folding his hands over his stomach and draping his left leg over his propped-up knee.

He didn't say anything to me, opting instead to direct his eyes to the clouds overhead. They must have been particularly entrancing today, because I didn't really feel like looking anywhere else once I had them in my sights.

"I would have been happy with being dead, you know?"

Lazily, I reached out towards the sky, my eyes following along as my fingers closed around my view of one of the clouds. Maybe it was my muscles or maybe it was gravity, but something moved my fist out of the way, and that cloud was still floating up there there like nothing else mattered.

The fluffy, formless shape it was taking must have been cruel irony.

"I was brought here without a choice, without knowing what it would entail. None of this feels like it _should_ be real." Cocking one blackened finger back, I concentrated for a moment, before flicking it back out. A visible cone of air shot upwards, ruffling our hair and fluttering along the length of the sail. "I'm here because we're going to Raftel, and who the fuck knows what we're gonna find there, you know? I might be able to get where I belong, but I'm not sure I want to be on this crew."

If there was anything that could get me back to Earth, or maybe even Hell, then it would have to be once we'd reached the final destination. The place that people would always remember. There was no other option available, it may as well have been a law of reality when it came to fantasy settings.

"I'm not cut out to chase freedom like the rest of you."

But that just didn't appeal to me. I wasn't the type of author that wrote to fill the empty hole that life had left in my chest. I didn't crave any epic journey across time and space.

Was it really so bad that I just wanted to die?

"But if I stop, and get off this crazy-ass ride we're all on, there's no guarantee that I'll ever get anywhere." I spread my hand out, sprouting lenses along the entire length of it. With a small mental push, the began to rise off my hand, gaining a glow that bordered on green in the sunlight as they built upon one another. "This is a grand adventure we're undertaking, the kind of shit that grants wishes at the end. If things keep going the way they are for me, then I'll have all the time in the world."

The construct in my hand continued to grow, needing no input from me beyond the momentary burst of inspiration. Within a few moments I was looking at a copy of my own face, albeit with a few purposeful mistakes made. It was me, but at the same time, it was something I could never be.

"But I can look you, or anyone else in the eye, and I can tell you with the utmost certainty that I will _never_ find Raftel on my own."

I curled my hand into a fist, crumbling Intern's visage into a fine, sparkling mist. Usopp didn't say anything when the wind carried it over to him, not moving but for the deep breaths he was taking.

"That's how this shit works. If there's anything that'll help me get to where I want to be, then it's this crew. All of you have no choice but to be legends, but me?"

The puppy curled up on my chest let out a huffy, shuddering breath. My hand dropped on top of its head, rubbing absently at the back of his ears. Barely consciously, I began funneling Haki into him through the contact, beginning the arduous journey of getting him to where he had been before I fucked up.

"Until I find something that'll put me in the ground, where I belong, then I'll only ever be my own legacy. So, I guess, to answer your question: No, I wouldn't have stayed with her. But I don't think I want to be a part of the crew either, and the fact that leaving is the only choice I can't afford to make…"

Being trapped was never a nice sensation. It was suffocating, taking up all the room in your lungs. It weighed you down, turned your organs to lead and the air around you to cement.

Eventually, something had to break, and humans had the unfortunate mental and physical feature of bending under pressure.

"...It makes me angry. It makes me want to tear the world apart until I dig myself a grave that can hold me. It scares the shit out of me."

The words were flat, empty. I had nothing left to offer, now that the rage had been drained out of me. It would be back soon enough, it always was, but all I could feel right now was helpless. Weak.

"I...I don't want this."

It was that simple. None of me, on any conceivable level, wanted any part of this. Why the fuck would I want to be here, in this world? The government was even worse than what I'd left behind, half the landmass was uninteresting drivel, the other half wanted to kill me and everyone else in the world, and I'd given up any chance of ever being able to swim on a fucking _ocean planet._

Hell, they didn't even have the internet here. That was one of the reasons I'd even been managing back home.

Really, the only improvement was the superpowers, and even those were being a bitch.

"And I just know that the fucker that did this to me is out there somewhere, lurking near the end of the line, laughing his ass off at me." My hand stilled, and the puppy growled. Whether that was a response to what I had said or what I had done, I didn't have a clue. "Dunno what the fuck I'm gonna even _do_ to him if it ever gets to that point..."

"I'll shoot him."

I couldn't help it, I snorted. It had been too unexpected for me to do anything else.

Usopp pushed himself back into a seated position as I tilted my head to look at him, a grin on his face. I couldn't tell if it was feigned or not, but considering how shitty he was at lying, I could only assume it was genuine.

He must have misinterpreted my interest, because he quickly shook his hands out in front of his face, like he was trying to ward me off.

"You don't know what you want to do, and hey, that's fine! Totally fine!" With a grandiose gesture, Usopp jabbed himself in the chest. I saw his face twitch as his own thumb dug into his sternum, but decided to save him the embarrassment. Him having to smother a cough was funny enough for me. "Buuuuut, even if you don't know what you're going to do, I do. I'm gonna shoot him, and Luffy's gonna punch him, just like Zoro's gonna stab him and Sanji's gonna kick him and Nami's gonna… do whatever it is she does. I should build her a weapon that's better than that stick…"

Usopp trailed off, his eyes clouding over slightly as he mumbled to himself under his breath. I heard the phrases 'extending' and 'destroy them all' before I decided to recline back and stop listening. Let the crazy man scheme and all that, if he needed me then he'd know where to find me. Besides, I was well versed in the ways of making progress while in a sort of haze.

Granted, mine were usually alcoholic in nature, but to each their own.

Still, this only managed to confirm one of the things I'd been dreading. They were growing attached to me, at least in some capacity, and it probably wouldn't be long until I was reciprocating. How were they supposed to live with the fact that I only wanted to leave if this continued? Would it get to the point when I wanted to stay alive?

If so, when would it stop? How many people would my actions hurt before I got what I craved? What would I do if I got to the point of genuinely not caring about them anymore? It wasn't even a question of could I live with myself afterwards; would they be able to live with themselves?

I didn't want to believe that I could have that much of an impact. People had told me in the past that I was a charismatic force, but I'd not believed them. To be fair to me, it was kind of difficult to accept something like that at face value.

Hell, they didn't need me, and I didn't want them to need me. But hey, my stupid ass got myself into this situation, with a little help. Thanks, me, you motherfucker.

No problem, me. Get fucking bent.

A finger tapping against my forehead drew my attention back to the world around me. I opened my eyes, briefly wondered when it was that I had closed them, and glanced back over that Usopp.

He offered me a grin that bared all his teeth and crinkled up both of his eyes, swiping across his lengthy nose with a thumb.

"I don't think you're scared. I think you're confused." The puppy on my chest raised his head slightly, yawned, and thumped face-first back into my shirt. I ignored him, keeping my attention on Usopp as he scratched at the back of his neck and glanced off to the side.

"Lemme tell you something, I know a thing or two about cowardice. Joining Luffy's crew and leaving home was probably the bravest thing I've ever done." Usopp chuckled, miming a one-two punch in front of himself that almost knocked him over. "You don't strike me as a coward."

"You hardly know me." By my own design.

"Hey, that's true." The puppy hiccuped. A bubble of Haki rose from its back, forming a crude human shape before the smaller ball on the top tipped to the side and fell off. For the most part, he went ignored. "But you're still a part of the crew, which means that even if I'm so terrified that I can't even move my legs, if we ever come across the guy that hurt you, I'll shoot him. With something that's really spicy."

For some reason, the image of Usopp pepper spraying me mercilessly entered my mind's eye. I probably shouldn't have found it as funny as I did.

"...I guess I'll need to stick around to see that." Something occurred to me in that moment, and I sat up ever so slightly so I could catch Usopp's eye once more. "Assuming you weren't lying?"

Immediately, he snapped into an upright position, his hand in the air in front of him, palm facing outwards."I make no promises!"

I sighed through my nose as I pushed myself off the deck. That was a more reassuring answer than anything else I could have been told, oddly enough. Something was telling me that he wasn't lying, for once, and I was fairly certain that I probably would have preferred if he was.

"Just as well, I suppose." Part of me wondered about what he was saying. Maybe I should cut back on the body horror while I was around him…? Actually, on second thought, he seemed to be doing just fine, so nah. "Say, what do you reckon I should do about Nami and her sister…?"

"The first conversation was hard enough, I'm not even going to look in that direction." Usopp shook his head hard enough to make his bushy hair whip about. All things considered, I don't think I could really blame the man. "You should ask Sanji or something, he'd probably be able to give you some advice."

'Some' and 'Advice' must have been what the cook had named his fancy dress shoes. "I think you mean he'd kick the shit out of me, for leaving a pretty girl behind."

"It's the way of the ocean." Usopp shrugged, and glanced off to the side. His face fell slightly, almost like he was considering his own wor… oh. _Oh._ Shit. "I think...I think he'd understand that."

Yep. Yep, it was exactly what I was thinking. None of the crew were like me, they'd all had to give something up in order to come aboard. Usopp had left behind that lady friend of his, hadn't he? If my shitty memory served me well, her name had started with a K.

My heart went out to him, it really did. Lord knew there were people that I missed. I would have given anything to be able to talk to my father and sisters. That wasn't an option for me, though, and it didn't look like Usopp would get the chance for a long while yet. The only technology for that were the snails, and I was fairly sure that even those couldn't convey images.

But still, what could I do about it? I wasn't any sort of technological wiz, all I had was my Haki and my Devil Fruit… my Lens Devil Fruit…

Now _that_ was something to look into later. It was foolish, supernatural, and likely more than a little expensive, but there was definitely potential there for something great.

It was just too bad that all I had was a chunk of two admittedly-high profile bounties, and a whole shitload of mouse onesies. The cheese had all been donated to the only person on the ship who could actually do something with it. It was pretty high-quality stuff, according to Sanji.

Not that I would have expected anything less. Nezumi had been a ranking Marine, those guys could probably walk into any place and take whatever they wante-

My brain stalled entirely as a brand new thought entered it. There was no chance I could ever pull something like this off. It was the dumbest thing I'd ever even considered. It was fucking hilarious, and if I somehow managed to pull it off, then I would be set for a good, long while.

...But with my skill set, who could I possibly…?

Slowly, I uncurled my hand, drawing forth my Haki. It covered my skin quickly, beginning to rise off of it as I pushed more and more. Once I'd gathered a fair amount, I flexed my fingers, springing up as many lenses as I conceivably could.

Just like earlier, the Haki collapsed, melting away from my hand. It didn't seem solid, but it certainly wasn't a liquid either. I moved my hand to my chin to rub it in thought, and the Haki followed along with my movements, even though it didn't seem to physically be connected with my any longer.

Following an errant idea, I tried to push more Haki into it. The mass grew slowly, bubbles forming on the surface and popping harmlessly. It was unappealing to look at, and lacked any purpose, as far as I could see. Really, it just looked like a pitch-black pool of lava was following my hand.

 _Oh fuck me sideways this could work._

"…Hey, Usopp… what's our timber situation looking like?"

Usopp tore his eyes away from what I'd been doing, a visible shiver going through his whole body when he looked back into my face. I could feel my mouth spread wide, grinning wide enough to strain the muscles.

"...Since we haven't even had to repair a tear in the sail since you ate your Devil Fruit, it's 'looking' really good." I giggled. Usopp physically recoiled a little bit, adding on in a tiny voice, "why?"

I couldn't explain my plan to him. Nothing would ever get done if I did, he would be too busy calling me an idiot to work.

"Alright, look. this is going to be the dumbest thing I've ever done, but do you reckon you'd be able to turn one of my onesies into a Marine coat and cap before we get to Loguetown?"

The terrified expression left Usopp's face as quickly as it had appeared. In perfect unison, we both glanced down at my clothes. I'd left the zipper down, enough for a large majority of my shirt to be poking out, but my feet still ended in pawprints and there was definitely a couple of mouse ears pressed against the back of my neck.

"...I completely forgot you were wearing... _that_."

It really undercut the moment, if I did say so myself.

God I loved this thing.

"Fuck off, it's comfy."


End file.
